By CHENG Lu

Microsoft’s Bing scooped 37.4 percent in China’s desktop searches in April, surpassing Baidu as the country’s search engine of choice. Baidu’s market share dropped to 27 percent, a long way behind.

Neither Baidu nor Microsoft has responded to this surprising development.

In February, Microsoft launched a new Bing search engine and Edge browser, integrated with ChatGPT. Jiemian News previously conducted a beta test and highlighted the advantages of the new Bing as a conversational search engine that saves users time, integrates various reference materials, and provides reasonably reliable answers. Furthermore, the New Bing can proactively generate responses based on the current answer.

Analysis from third-party data firm data.ai showed that the global downloads of the new Bing increased tenfold overnight. Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi said that Bing users have engaged in over 500 million chats since February, with over 100 million people using Bing daily.

Since Google’s exit from China in 2010, Baidu has consistently dominated the domestic market. Only in March, Baidu was used in around half of searches in China, with Bing’s 15 percent a somewhat distant second.

Shortly after Microsoft introduced ChatGPT, Baidu launched the Ernie bot. According to Robin Li, founder of Baidu, the company plans to integrate the search engine business with Ernie Bot, bringing about a generational transformation in search engines.

Baidu still holds 60 percent of the domestic mobile search market. On a global scale, Google remains unrivaled. The world’s second choice, Bing ranked second with 2.8 percent.