According to Similarweb, the incorporation of OpenAI's technology into Bing, which is owned by Microsoft, has led to a surge in the search engine's usage , enabling it to compete more effectively with market leader Google in terms of page visits. Following the launch of Microsoft's AI-based Bing search engine on February 7, there has been a significant increase of 15.8 percent in page visits, while visits to Alphabet-owned Google have declined by nearly 1 percent, as per the data of March 20.
These statistics are an early indication that Microsoft is gaining an edge over Google in the rapidly evolving competition for generative AI supremacy, powered by technology such as that used by ChatGPT.
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Figures also highlight a rare opening for Microsoft to make progress in the search market, which is worth over $120 billion (nearly Rs. 9,89,600 crore) and has been dominated by Google for decades with a market share of more than 80 percent.
DA Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria predicts that Bing will continue to gain a larger share of the search market in the coming months, particularly if Google lags in integrating generative AI technology into its own search product.
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Although the majority of users have had access to Bing's AI since February, Google's chatbot Bard has just lately started to be made available to the general public.
According to Gil Luria, despite having less than a tenth of Google's market share, even a 1 per cent or 2 per cent conversion of users to Bing would significantly benefit Bing and Microsoft. App research firm Data.ai reports that global downloads for Bing have increased eightfold following the integration of AI technology, while downloads for the Google search app have declined by 2 per cent during the same period.
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Nevertheless, some analysts believe that Google, which became the dominant search player in the early 2000s by unseating then-leader Yahoo, could overcome its initial setbacks and maintain its market lead.
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