Microsoft’s own search engine Bing is one that everyone heard of but hardly used regularly. But with some effective steps from Microsoft and the recent announcement of the artificial intelligence-enhanced ChatGPT’s integration to Bing is changing the scenario gradually.
Going back to the first point of why no one wants to use Bing. The search engine is a part of Microsoft’s large eco-system, a part of people’s regular Windows computer operating system.
That must have been a perk for Bing, but no! That was indeed a drawback for it.
Remember Internet Explorer - the native browser for Windows? It has a reputation for being the slowest browser. And users were constantly complaining. Even some websites wrote specifically not to use Internet Explorer to access their websites.
And Microsoft lost a chance of acquiring a large number of users using the native browser for Windows there. Everyone switched to browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and others.
As Bing was the default search engine for Windows, losing users from its browsers rapidly impacted the number of people using Bing.
Microsoft addressed the problem, rebranded its browser to ‘Microsoft Edge’, and improved Bing. But in the competitive world of Tech and Silicon Valley prodigies pouring their bests into projects, it’s hard to gain the lost users.
All other services were constantly improving, and small projects were spotting problems and loopholes from the big services. They were and still are offering a better service, improving that specific problem.
When google came to the surface and was not a big company like now, Microsoft never really thought it would knock them off. And as of Microsoft, they were always egoistic and were lazy to address their problems.
Microsoft thought that everyone should use Microsoft’s product but was late to realise that they have to bend and meet the ever-changing user base’s expectations which are constantly being exposed to new and improved technologies.
After its launch in 2009, Bing held only 3.1 per cent of the global search engine market share, while Google held more than 90 per cent.
As of 2018, the scenario didn’t change much. But stats show that in December 2022, Bing held around 9 per cent of the market share, showing a significant rise. Google lost users and sat on 84.08 per cent.
Till 2015, Bing lost a subsequent amount of money. Right after its launch, Bing lost over a billion dollars every four months.
But after Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft's CEO, he made some efficient decisions, and Bing became profitable in 2015; however, not as much as Google.
Things were right on the verge of change after artificial intelligence took over the tech world. Microsoft invested in OpenAI, which developed the language program ChatGPt. It is the highest user-gaining tech to date, gaining over 200 million users within two months.
Later Microsoft announced on February 9, 2023, that they would integrate it on Bing and created a waiting list for the ‘New Bing’. Within 48 hours, more than one million users signed into the waiting list!
In today’s technology, artificial intelligence is the new hotcake. With AI, things can be done within seconds, like creating artwork, making music, or the student-friendly presentation generator.
According to the tech industry leaders, artificial intelligence will greatly impact every existing technology. Human-like answers from a search engine are the prime example of this.
Instead of searching for the boarding ticket on a search engine, one can command it to print the ticket, which will do that instantly. This will revolutionise the whole idea of searching the internet.
And ChatGPT-integrated Bing is going to be the pioneer of this. It will not be easy for Bing to knock Google off the throne of search engine giant soon, but by the looks, it can be a possibility for the coming future. If not, there will be healthy competition in the search engine war.
bashiirahammed@yahoo.com