Microsoft’s FY25 Q3 earnings report was dominated by cloud primarily, although AI had plenty to say during the festivities as well.
Microsoft Copilot is powered by ChatGPT and other OpenAI technologies, and deeply integrates Bing Search to provide real time information from the world wide web. Microsoft announced during the earnings report that Bing had seen a 22% engagement rate growth year-over-year, likely driven by those aforementioned integrations.
Bing has long been the but of many ‘a joke over the years, owing to direct comparisons with Google. Google search has long held dominance over the web, powering the vast majority of web-based businesses with its online ads platform and algorithmic content curation. Although, the latest data trends suggest that users are starting to look for real alternatives.
Data from both Statista and and StatCounter (via Tuta) show a Google in decline. Both platforms use differing methodologies for tallying market share, but StatCounter in particular offered something of a ill milestone for Google. StatCounter showed that Google had dipped below 90% market share this year, for the first time since its records began.
Statista has more granular data, offering Bing a very generous-looking upwards trend if you chart out the past ten years. Other search engines like Ecosia and DuckDuckGo have also seen some potent growth as well. But why is this happening?
It’s unlikely to be any single thing impacting Google here, but we can explore some anecdotal possibilities as to what exactly is going on here.
- Google lost anti-trust cases relating to search, forcing it to offer users alternative search engines like Bing during the set up process on Android in some markets.
- Google has been flooding its search results with AI-generated content and reddit posts that often lack context. Gemini’s inability to understand context has created a raft of hilarious memes mocking Google search.
- The rise of “ethical” search engines like Ecosia and DuckDuckGo have also given users a real alternative.
- Anecdotally, I’ve noticed an upswing in interest in Bing via Microsoft Rewards, which gives users points simply for entering search queries, which can then be exchanged for vouchers.
- European alternatives, such as Ecosia, may be seeing growth as countries impacted by Trump’s tariff blitz campaign to reject American products. McDonalds recently suggested, for example, that it is seeing decreased sales in Europe due to anti-American sentiment. Could this be impacting Google too?
- Thanks perhaps in part to ChatGPT and Copilot, Bing Search is actually now offering the kind of quality standard Google previously set.
- General AI pollution on the web may be compelling users to break their Google habits to seek alternatives, subsequently discovering that other options aren’t half bad.
Google still has upwards of 89.9% of global search engine market share, but a drop of a single point accounts for tens of millions of users, given that its overall user base accounts for roughly 5 billion people.
Windows’ dominating market share has been overlooked in recent years due to the fact it is a fully open platform. Google, conversely, has been accused of using its monopoly over search to further promote its own products and services while undermining competitors — according to some anti-trust prosecutors at least.
Indeed, regulatory scrutiny of Google is ramping up, with U.S. anti-trust cases calling for the firm to spin off Google Chrome, Android, or perhaps even both.
It seems unlikely that Bing or any other search engine may challenge Google’s dominating position any time soon, but if the downward trend continues, it could present Microsoft Bing with an utterly rare opportunity.
