Microsoft’s Bing Reaches 100M Users, Competing with Google for Market Share

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Microsoft’s Bing search engine has hit a milestone of 100 million daily active users, boosted by the recent launch of its AI-powered Bing Chat feature. While Google still dominates with over 1 billion daily active users, Microsoft’s growth in recent years and new features like Bing Chat and Microsoft Edge default settings are helping it gain market share.

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In a blog post, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, announced the achievement and highlighted that around a third of Bing Chat testers are new to Bing. The company is seeing around three chats per session and more than 45 million total chats since the preview began.

But Bing Chat is not the only reason for the increased usage of Microsoft’s search engine. Mehdi noted that Microsoft Edge has also contributed to Bing usage, as Microsoft aggressively promotes its search engine defaults with Edge updates, Windows updates, and prompts to discourage people from downloading Google Chrome. Mehdi expects that new capabilities, like having Bing search and create in the Edge sidebar, will drive further growth.

Microsoft’s recent stats on Bing Chat usage come weeks after the company laid out its plans to grow its advertising business in a digital ad market worth around $500 billion. Philippe Ockenden, Microsoft’s CVP of finance, has said that for every 1 point of share gain in the search advertising market, it’s a $2 billion revenue opportunity for the company.

Despite its progress, Microsoft still has a long way to go to catch up to Google, which generated over $200 billion from advertising in 2022. However, Microsoft has already grown its advertising business to $18 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, compared to $10 billion in the previous fiscal year, largely thanks to Bing.

While Microsoft remains a small player in the search market, Mehdi is optimistic about the company’s growth potential and market share. In a nod to Google’s dominance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said, “Google is the 800-pound gorilla in search. I want people to know that we made them dance.”

Takeaways

As Microsoft continues to innovate and develop new features, it remains to be seen how much market share it can gain from Google. But with a growing user base and a strong advertising business, Microsoft is making significant strides in the search engine market.

Source: The Verge