Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images
- Microsoft unveiled an updated Bing search engine on Tuesday, powered by the tech behind ChatGPT.
- CEO Satya Nadella is going after Google's dominant lead in the search market.
- Check out these charts below to see how well the new Bing is doing so far.
It was a big week for Bing. Relatively speaking.
On Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled an updated Bing search engine powered by the technology behind ChatGPT. The OpenAI chatbot has taken the world by storm since launching in late November, and Microsoft, the main backer of OpenAI, is riding this wave of enthusiasm to challenge Google's dominant lead in the search market.
Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi tweeted that in 48 hours more than 1 million people joined a waitlist for the company's Bing preview.
The Bing app on Apple's iOS went from 142nd rank on February 7 to fourth overall on February 9, according to Apptopia data. Downloads of the Bing app jumped to 102,952 on February 9, up significantly from an average of about 12,000 downloads per day in the prior week. Google app downloads, remained steady between 300,000 to 320,000 per day in the same period, Apptopia data shows.
"The app launched in 2009 (I had no idea Bing has been around that long) but just had its largest day of downloads ever," Adam Blacker, Apptopia's director of content and communications, wrote in a report on Friday. "While we expect installs to climb as more people gain access to the AI-powered search, it's largest day is still only 32% of Google Search's installs."
Daily active users of Bing's app jumped to 572,965 on February 9, up from around 380,000 in the days prior. That still trails Google by a long way. Google's app had around 22.8 million daily active users during the same week, according to Apptopia data.
The Bing website attracted 30.3 million visits on February 7, the day Microsoft unveiled its AI-powered updates and invited users to try it out and join a waitlist. The day after, there were 31.7 million visits, according to Similarweb estimates. That's up from traffic in the range of 27 million to 29 million daily visits in the preceding days. The February 8 traffic was about 15% higher than what Bing has been seeing on an average day over the past 6 months.
In the end, all this is about gaining a higher share of the highly lucrative search engine market. We checked in with Statcounter, which provides widely-followed data on this sector, and the numbers are daunting for Bing.
As of February 9, Google had 93.21% of the worldwide search engine market. Bing had 3.05%, according to Statcounter estimates.
"There's no change to the search share yet," Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Statcounter, told Insider.
Do you work at Microsoft? Have insight to share? Contact the reporter Ashley Stewart using a nonwork device via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@insider.com).