Microsoft’s Bing has surpassed 100 million daily active users

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s pursuit of Google reached a new stage this week after the company announced that its artificial intelligence-powered search engine Bing had surpassed 100 million daily active users.

Youssef Mahdi, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief Consumer Marketing Officer, revealed Bing Stats in a blog post Wednesday. Notably, Mehdi noted that a third of the active users of Bing Preview, an early limited version of the upcoming search engine, are new to Bing. He added that the company saw this as a “proof” of its view that the search is due to innovation as well as proof The attractiveness of providing search, answers, chat and create in one place.

This isn’t to say Microsoft can go head-to-head with Google, which has more than 1 billion daily active users, but it’s a good start.

“This is a surprising number, however we are fully aware that we are still a small and low single digit player,” Mehdi said in the blog. “However, it’s good to be at the dance!”

The Microsoft CEO went on to say that users are doing more searches on Bing, though he didn’t reveal specific numbers.

Mahdi explained that two factors drive the experience and use of Bing. One is its browser, Microsoft Edge, which the company has pushed hard at users with Windows Updates and claims to try to stop people from downloading Google Chrome, like Reported by The Verge. Mahdi said Microsoft plans to continue using Edge to enhance Bing in the future.

“We expect new capabilities, such as performing a Bing search and creating a sidebar for Edge, will fuel further growth,” the Microsoft CEO stated.

Another factor driving the growth, Mehdi said, is Bing’s updated core web search ranking, which has increased in relevance and quality thanks to the recent integration of OpenAI’s Prometheus model. At a press conference last month, Microsoft said Prometheus was “more powerful than ChatGPT,” The OpenAI chatbot that revolutionized the world.

As expected, users also come to Bing to chat with the notorious search engine. On a daily basis, nearly a third of people use Bing chat with an average of three conversations per session. Bing has recorded more than 45 million conversations since the preview began on February 7.