By: Nick Gambino
In a shocking plot twist, Microsoft’s search engine Bing crossed 100 million daily active users. If I were a betting man, I would have bet against Bing in the search engine race while those who gambled on the underdog would be making out like bandits.
“We are pleased to share that after a number of years of steady progress, and with a little bit of a boost from the million+ new Bing preview users, we have crossed 100M Daily Active Users of Bing,” Head of Consumer Marketing, Yusuf Mehdi, said in a Microsoft Bing blog post.
Bing has always been the redheaded stepchild with Google eating up most of the search engine competition with ease. Microsoft’s announcement of their six-figure activity seems to suggest Google’s station as the king of the hill is not guaranteed forever. The spot is for the taking.
Bing has received a big leg-up with the introduction of their very own AI chatbot that is built much the same way as the popular ChatGPT. People curious about the chatbot have been flooding to Bing to try it out in their search queries. In fact, users checking out the AI chatbot make up about a third of the daily preview users.
While this is definitely good news for Microsoft, they won’t be able to rest on these boosted numbers for long. If their new AI-centric search feature is responsible for this surge in users then they need to watch out for Google who have just announced their own chat AI, Bard.
Bard works in tandem with Search but is separate from it. Google describes the LaMDA-powered tool as a conversational AI service and is essentially their version of ChatGPT.
With all this talk of Bing’s numbers, let’s not also forget Google still commands over 1 billion daily active users which means Microsoft’s Bing is rocking with only a tenth of their numbers even after their AI boost. Still, Bing has seen rising numbers over the years suggesting they’re doing something right and their use of AI is yet another step in the right direction.
