Microsoft’s incorporation of ChatGPT into Bing, its search engine, is boosting the company’s growth as more users are becoming more inclined to use Bing as an alternative to Google. The tech giant said it has passed the 100 million daily active users threshold.
The milestone was announced last week by the software maker, just weeks after it integrated ChatGPT, AI-powered chatbot that provides humanlike context to queries. The idea is believed to have pushed many users to Bing that is hoping to catch up with Google’s 1 billion daily users.
“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 plus new Bing preview users, we have crossed 100 million daily active users of Bing,” says Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, in a blog post.
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Bing Chat, a new addition to Bing, has become a driving force for the search engine’s growth. Mehdi said that around a third of Bing Chat testers are new to Bing.
“Roughly one third of daily preview users are using Chat daily. We’re seeing on average, roughly three chats per session with more than 45 million total chats since the preview began,” he said.
Another reason for the increased usage of Microsoft search engine is Microsoft Edge – the browser that replaced Internet Explorer, which the company has been aggressively updating with new features. “We expect new capabilities, like having Bing search and create in the Edge sidebar, will bolster further growth,” says Mehdi.
Microsoft incorporated ChatGPT into Bing search about a month ago. But the idea suffered a minor setback following a weird behavior, including rude responses to users, displayed by the chatbot during launch.
The Verge reported that Microsoft recently added a toggle for different personality tones designed to counter the wild outbursts many saw with the Bing AI chatbot. The California-based company also added some restrictions to halt the rude responses, but has been gradually loosening those restrictions over the past week.
Microsoft plans to wrestle a chunk of the search ad revenue from Google, and has been reeling out measures to accomplish that. Philippe Ockenden, Microsoft’s CVP of finance, said on a call with analysts last month, that the company plans to grab as much as possible from the $500 billion digital ad market.
“For every 1 point of share gain in the search advertising market, it’s a $2 billion revenue opportunity for our advertising business,” said
The Verge noted that Microsoft has boosted its ad business – growing it to $18 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, compared to $10 billion in the previous fiscal year. But the growth, which is largely attributed to Bing, still falls significantly short of Google’s $200 billion revenue within the same time period.