Microsoft Says Bing Has Crossed 100 Million Daily Active Users (engadget.com) 38
Bing has crossed 100 million daily active users a month after the launch of its chatbot AI, according to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's VP for Modern Life, Search and Devices. Engadget: He said the company is fully aware that it's still just "a small, low, single digit share player," but hey, there was a time when Bing wasn't even a part of the conversation.
Now, after the tech giant released its next-gen version, even those who haven't used it in the past are relying on it for their searches: Mehdi noted that one-third of Bing's daily active users are new to the search engine. "We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience," the VP said.
Now, after the tech giant released its next-gen version, even those who haven't used it in the past are relying on it for their searches: Mehdi noted that one-third of Bing's daily active users are new to the search engine. "We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience," the VP said.
Bing has had billions of customers (Score:2, Insightful)
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Bing is the search engine, Edge is the browser. It's like saying you're using google rather than chrome to download another browser, then never using it again, when Chrome would be Google's browser.
I can google with edge, bing search with chrome, etc...
That said, lately I'm finding some searches better with Bing. Too many bad actors targeting google, perhaps.
Re: Bing has had billions of customers (Score:2)
We know that but a lot of people will download a new web browser just to change the search engine it is uses.
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wow really? Does edge make it that hard to change or are windows users well, just windows users? Been using Firefox and Chrome for so long on Linux and Android I generally do not know of these Windows issues anymore.
Re: Bing has had billions of customers (Score:2)
It's just easier to a lot of people to install something they know then to go searching though settings to customize something they don't know.
Many plan revenge (Score:2)
"Vengeance will be ours!" formerly crossed area man says.
Chat is fun (Score:2)
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Chat bots for search will go the way of curved televisions, smart glasses, and napster. Fascinating for the masses but only for a short time until the masses realize it's useless. Just have a few more of the stunningly incorrect answers.
It's a natural language processor primarily, with a little bit of chat output added on. Searching for stuff using natural language is not really that useful as some think it is. We can already search using natural language and we get bad responses, so we learn to search
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It is correct enough of the time that if it could give citations that match its answers in meaningful ways, I would never look back for non-browsing internet use, by which I mean when I am looking for answer.
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Napster was useful for a while until the world caught up to it. I still have a lot of mp3s from that era. Good times.
Well, okay... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean...Windows has been turning Start Menu searches into Bing searches for a few years now; with that sort of a shift, it's unsurprising that sea level would rise in general.
In terms of the ChatGPT integration Mehdi is lauding, I'm sure there is going to be an uptick as people look to see the capabilities involved...that MS was able to integrate this kind of AI before Google is notable, especially since Google's demo of Bard went the way it did. The attention is going to be from both sides; those who are looking for a Google alternative to see if MS has managed to fit the bill, and those who believe Google is still superior and are looking to see a new set of Bing shortcomings.
But really, the uptick a few weeks in doesn't tell much of a story at all. What will the usage be in three months? Next year? Is the most popular search term still "Google" or "Google.com"? If it's been knocked down due to a long tail of actual-searches over the past few weeks, will that hold, or will it go back to "google.com" by the end of the summer? Even if people really, really are using Bing for actual-searches...are they making Microsoft money by clicking the ads? Or are the AI-based answers so good that the closest thing Bing can consider a 'win' from a business perspective is that people aren't clicking Google ads?
This is the sort of premature congratulation that brought us the famous and ironic "iPhone Funeral".
Re:Well, okay... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The very large company I work for made a corporate decision to disable Skype for Business and standardize on Teams. That lasted about a month. I think it is still company policy, but Teams has been so buggy, everyone gave up and just uses Zoom for video conferencing. Connection issues, audio issues, screen sharing issues Just make our lives miserable and prevented actual work from being done.
My personal favorite (happened more than once):
Co worker: "Hey I can't see the shared content"
Me: "Move your Tea
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At work, we have Teams officially and I think it starts up in Windows by default. I guess I am technically a Teams user whether I send messages or not. I think that is how MS is getting 270 million users. I looked I did receive and send a few messages in 2022 for users that do not use Slack which I use so little I forgot I used it in 2022.
Interestingly, when we first got Slack, the IT team kept reminding us we had Teams because they had to pay for Slack and Teams is free with Office probably. The response
Re: Well, okay... (Score:3)
Search engines without extra bullshit (Score:3)
Do any search engines exist that just return results? I’m not interested in “what people also searched for” or boxes of mildly related content scattered through the results. I don’t care about what’s popular I care about what’s accurate.
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DuckDuckGo does just that. If there's an ad it is clearly marked as such. Other than that, you only get results.
Re: Search engines without extra bullshit (Score:2)
emberassangly low (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider that Bing is on by default on Edge which is also default, and considering there is at least 1 Billion installs. Then consider that the vast majority of users is not quite literate in how a computer works (as long as they can do their work, mail and browsing). If you can get 90% of those non-techy people to find a way to actively make Bing *not* their search engine, Bing must be doing a really bad job
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I prefer Brave, myself, but you need to admit that there are a very large number of home users and office users for that matter who may never need to search at all on a particular day. So 100 M daily users might not be so far off.
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Of Course (Score:1)
Soo, counted like Windows "activations"? (Score:3)
I.e. overblown by a significant factor, because Microsoft was never above lying as long as it is (mostly) misdirection.
Bing is increasingly useful (Score:1)
Seems half the time I'm looking for something that covers even remotely controversial topics I don't even bother with Google anymore. Search results are either hopelessly SEOd or run through some sort of political filter. Instead of wading through pages of non-responsive results you can just use Bing and get what you are looking for right away.
Re: Bing is increasingly useful (Score:3)
Can you have an example?
If I search for extremist stuff or conspiracy stuff I get the exact same pages on Bing and Google.
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Can you have an example?
If I search for extremist stuff or conspiracy stuff I get the exact same pages on Bing and Google.
I just can't recall things in this way sorry. Maybe I should start keeping a list.
It's just like if I said Google answers are in my experience often wrong. I know on numerous occasions I've been burned by them or had to do more digging to get accurate data to the point where anymore I just ignore them as unreliable.. yet I couldn't tell you off the top of my head of any specific instance.
Or if I said that I am completely fed up with nonstop Quora spam I couldn't tell you the search terms that lead to that
That's not true (Score:2)
It's just half a dozen Chatbots making al the requests.
Let's all recognize this amazing achievement... (Score:2)
I mean...all it took for Microsoft to get to 1,000,000 daily active users globally was to:
* corner the desktop market through malicious practices
* become a monopoly
* ram Internet Explorer/Edge down our throats for several decades
* Set bing as the default homepage
* Repeatedly build and abandon their own phone and music service
* Inject ads into their competitors download pages to desperately try to keep users
* Frequently release updates that attempt to r
Bing is the Google of porn (Score:2)
...or is it pr0n? I can never get it right.
Who Says? (Score:2)
Where did this statistic come from? Bing (aka Sydney)? The same Bing that told me Hilary Clinton was the President, that it's still 2021, and so many other fascinating things?
Well Google aren't a global service, so... (Score:1)
I switched to Bing some time ago since Google decide not to provide their search engine everywhere.
I've not really noticed much negative difference.