(Oct 29): Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc is working on developing a search engine that crawls the web for information to provide to people using its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, The Information reported on Monday.

Meta is looking to reduce its dependence on Google and Microsoft Corp’s Bing, which currently provides information about news, sports and stocks to people using Meta AI, The Information said, citing an unidentified person who it said had spoken with the company’s search engine team.

Shares in Google owner Alphabet Inc erased gains on the news, falling as much as 0.8%. Meta gained 0.3%.

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