Last month, rumors circulated that Samsung was preparing to abandon Google as the default search engine for its built-in Internet app.

The beneficiary would have been Microsoft and its Bing search engine, which after 14 years of almost no public registration is suddenly making unexpected waves thanks to ChatGPT's enthusiastic adoption. [However, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, Samsung appears to have dropped the change.

According to the report, internal consideration of changing the default search engine has been suspended, partly because of "how the change would be perceived by the market" (i.e., a vote of no confidence would be unfavorable), and partly because such a bold move also because of the impact it would have on "the broader business relationship with Google."

After all, Samsung would have to work quite closely with Google. Not only with Galaxy phones and tablets running Google's Android OS, but also with smartwatches running Wear OS and the Exynos-based Tensor chip in the latest Pixel phones.

Besides, the report explains that "the majority of Samsung smartphone owners" do not even use Internet apps, preferring instead to choose a third-party browser.

Add to that the fact that the move does not affect areas of Android that are necessary to use Google, such as the search function in Android's home screen widget, and you can see why Samsung might find the change more trouble than it is worth.

Instead, Google continues to pay Samsung to be its default search engine, and in return gets an estimated $3 billion a year in advertising revenue, compared to what it gets from the iPhone and iPad, an estimated $18 to $20 billion annually for the same treatment. That may be small considering that they pay Apple an estimated $18 to $20 billion annually for the same treatment, but still not surprising.

If Samsung was considering Microsoft's Bing for non-financial, AI-related reasons, the company could be comforted by the huge amount Google spent on artificial intelligence in its recent I/O keynote. the Google Bard may have gotten off to a rocky start. But it is clearly the direction the company is looking in, and perhaps Samsung is growing more confident in its ability to maintain the status quo for now.

But this "for now" may be important: according to WSJ sources, Samsung is not "permanently closing the door on Bing as a future option," so this may not be a final decision. For the time being, however, it appears that Samsung phones will continue to work as before.