Bing loses search market share to Google despite ChatGPT integration

In context: Google retains a commanding lead over its competitors as the world's most popular search engine despite a myriad of privacy-related controversies, multiple antitrust investigations, and other issues. As of October 2023, the company reportedly had an 88.07 percent market share in the US, which is higher than the 86.75 percent share it had during the same period last year.

The report comes from StatCounter, which suggests Bing remains the second-most popular search engine with a 6.89 percent market share, while Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, and AOL languish at the bottom. The situation is even more skewed globally, with Google commanding a 91.55 percent market share in October 2023, while Bing could only muster 3.11 percent. Microsoft's search engine had a 3.59 percent market share during October 2022, meaning it slipped further over the past twelve months.

Bing's market share remains unimpressive despite the integration of ChatGPT, which was supposed to challenge Google's dominance in search for the first time in more than two decades. Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI sent shock waves through Google and hammered its stock prices, but as it turns out, doomsday predictions about the ChatGPT-Bing partnership eating into Google's market share were highly overblown.

According to the data, Bing's market share actually reduced over the past twelve months globally as well as in the US, where it dipped from 7.4 percent to 6.89 percent between October 2022 and October 2023. If the data is anything to go by, not only is Bing failing to eat Google's lunch, it is actually losing market share despite its AI smarts.

Ever since the public release of ChatGPT last year, Microsoft has integrated it into many of its products and services. Recently, the company introduced Windows Copilot, which resides as a button on the Windows 11 Taskbar, and clicking on it enables Bing Chat, allowing users to ask questions and initiate commands. However, media reports suggest that it is far from the polished product that Microsoft would have you believe.

Given the current state of Bing Chat, it is unlikely that it will be able to snatch away market share from Google any time soon, and with Google's own Bard AI expected to catch up to ChatGPT sooner rather than later, it is likely to remain the search leader globally for the foreseeable future.