Bing outage shows just how little competition Google search really has

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the recent outage of Microsoft's Bing search engine and the implications for alternative search engines that rely on Bing's API. It also touches on the dominance of Google in the search engine market and the challenges faced by other search providers.

🙋 Q&A

[01] Bing Outage and Impact on Other Search Engines

1. What happened when Bing went down?

• Searches from Microsoft's Edge browsers that had Bing as the default provider did not work.
• Services relying on Bing's search API, such as Microsoft's own Copilot, ChatGPT search, Yahoo, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo, also failed.

2. How long did the Bing outage last?

• Services were largely restored by the morning Eastern work hours.

3. What does the Bing outage highlight about the search engine market?

• The outage demonstrates the vulnerability of alternative search engines that rely on the major search engine providers (Google, Bing, Yandex) for their search results.
• It highlights the challenge of moving past the "single point of vulnerability" that the major search engines represent.

[02] Google's AI Overviews and Alternatives to Google

1. What did Google recently announce and debut?

• Google announced and debuted AI Overviews as a default addition to all searches.

2. How can users avoid the AI Overviews on Google?

• Users can hunt down the new "Web" option in a menu to avoid the AI Overviews.
• Alternatively, users can use the "Konami code" shortcut page provided by Ernie Smith to bypass the AI Overviews.

3. What are some of the concerns about AI and Google that are mentioned?

• Concerns about AI's hallucinations, power draw, or pizza recipes.
• Broader concerns about Google involving privacy, tracking, news, SEO, or monopoly power.

[03] Challenges for Alternative Search Engines

1. What is the challenge for most alternative search engines?

• The overwhelming majority of search tools offering an "alternative" to Google are using Google, Bing, or Yandex, the three major search engines that maintain massive global indexes.

2. Why do alternative search engines rely on the major search engines?

• According to the DuckDuckGo CEO, it costs upwards of a billion dollars a year to maintain a high-quality global web link index, which is why most other search engines need to "bootstrap" with one or both of the major providers (Google and Microsoft).

3. What would happen if Microsoft decided to pull API access or make Bing unreliable?

• If Microsoft decided to pull API access or make Bing unreliable, Google's default position would become even stronger, and non-conformists would have even fewer choices for alternative search engines.