People Remain Uninterested in Bing ⇥ arstechnica.com

It was Microsoft’s “landmark event”, according to the New York Times, and an “‘iPhone moment'” when it introduced Bing juiced with OpenAI. Google was “scrambling” because Bing was now “better”. Given how “competition is a click away”, you might think this triumph for Microsoft could manifest in a wave of new users, especially after Google’s “embarrassing” response.

Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica:

A year later, it looks like Microsoft’s AI efforts may have helped Bing on the margins, but they haven’t meaningfully eroded Google’s search market share, according to Bloomberg. Per Bloomberg’s analysis of data from Sensor Tower, Bing usage had been down around 33 percent year over year just before the AI-powered features were added, but those numbers had rebounded by the middle of 2023.

Microsoft hasn’t given an official update on Bing’s monthly active users in quite a while — we’ve asked the company for an update, and will share it if we get one — though Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi told Bloomberg that “millions and millions of people” were still using the new AI features.

You could attribute the perpetual disinterest in Bing to any number of factors: Google rapidly responded, Google remains the default in almost everybody’s browser, and Google is synonymous with online search. One thing Microsoft did get from its year of absorbing OpenAI features into its apps is a new valuation high.