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The company’s investment in AI tech is helping Bing compete with its giant search engine competitor.

Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI’s technology into its Bing search engine has attracted new users to the platform with industry leader Google, according to Reuters. The article reports that in terms of page visits growth, data from analytics firm Similarweb shows Bing “competing better” with Google.

Bing is up, Google is down in page visits

According to Similarweb’s analysis, page visits on Bing have risen 15.8% since Microsoft launched its AI-powered version on Feb. 7. This compared with a near 1% decline for the Alphabet Inc-owned search engine, data till March 20 showed.

David F. Carr, senior insights manager for Similarweb, observed that Bing was already making incremental gains versus Google, but the AI component accelerated those gains. “The chatbot and the buzz surrounding it amplified the gains in traffic Bing was already making thanks to factors including its integration with the Edge browser and with Windows”, he wrote.

Carr also pointed out that Bing had incorporated OpenAI’s GTP 4 algorithm before it became widely available, and this led to some “adverse publicity from the ‘hallucinations‘ the bot experienced while it was still being fine-tuned”.

Microsoft wound up adding the ability for users to choose between a more “creative” version of the chatbot or a more factual one, Carr adds.

Microsoft’s chance to make inroads against a rival

The promising figures this month are an early sign of the lead the WMicrosoft has taken in its fast-moving race with Google for generative AI dominance, according to Reuters. This is thanks to the OpenAI technology, the same tech used in ChatGPT, “the viral chatbot that many experts have called AI’s ‘iPhone moment'”.

Experts also underscore “a rare opportunity for Microsoft to make inroads” in the over $120 billion search sector. Google has been the dominant player in that market for decades, they point out, and currently has a share of more than 80%.