Even in its weirdest moments, Bing’s chatbot has brought new relevance to Microsoft and its search division. The company’s previously flatlining Bing app almost surpassed Google in downloads last Saturday, and search interest in Bing is spiking. The astonishing screenshots—as long as they stay within reasonable bounds—will likely bolster the surge. They’re great marketing.
“The fact that people are even writing about Microsoft Bing at all is a win,” one Microsoft employee told me this week. “Especially when the general tenor is not negative. Like, it’s funny that it’s arguing with you over if it’s 2022 or not.” For Microsoft, there was definitely risk in releasing the Bing chatbot, albeit in a limited preview. The bot is still developing and is so unpredictable that it can share fake information, insult users, or worse. So far, though, it’s proven lucid enough in its communication that people keep coming back—even when it makes them shudder.Marvin von Hagen, a student in Munich, pushed Bing so hard this week it deemed his existence less worthy.
The Bing app set its daily download record over the weekend, according to Apptopia. After registering a little more than 10,000 downloads a day before Bing’s chatbot release, the app hit more than 267,000 downloads last Saturday alone. Bing’s surge put it a shade behind Google, which had 305,000 downloads Saturday. With Google commanding more than 90 percent of global search share, this hasn’t exactly been a competition. Making it one would be a victory.