Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at an event on the company’s campus in Redmond, Washington, on Feb. 7, 2023.
Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft said Tuesday that it will start promoting its new Bing chatbot — which draws on startup OpenAI’s artificial intelligence capabilities — in an update to Windows 11.
Bing is not hugely popular, but Windows drives 9% of Microsoft’s revenue. It’s the world’s leading operating system, with about 82% share as of 2021. The addition of a link to the refreshed Bing next to the familiar Start button is a big step forward for technology that’s at times proven to be inaccurate or offensive. The gesture might help Microsoft challenge Google, which earlier this month permitted “trusted testers” to try its Bard chatbot that could rival Bing’s new ability to answer queries with web information.
“It’s a new day in search,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the event just three weeks ago at which Microsoft revealed the new Bing. “It’s a new paradigm in search. Rapid innovation is going to come.”
After entering a query into the search portion of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, a user will see search results and a new chat button. Clicking that button will open an Edge browser window and prompt the Bing chatbot to respond to the person’s query, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
Microsoft’s Bing chatbot in a Windows 11 update
Microsoft
The new Bing option is only becoming a regular fixture of Windows 11, which Microsoft released in 2021. Support for Windows 10 ends in 2025, and many people have not upgraded yet. In January about 69% of Windows PCs were still running Windows 10, and 18% were on Windows 11, according to estimates from StatCounter.
Not everyone will be able to see the chat button in Windows 11 at first. Microsoft has given more than 1 million people access to the new Bing, a small number compared with the estimated 100 million people who used OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in January.
In time, the taskbar change might drive higher use of the updated Bing. More than 500 million people use the Windows search box each month, Microsoft’s product chief, Panos Panay, wrote in a blog post.
Bing has been available from the Windows taskbar for years, and Microsoft generates revenue when ads appear in search results after people type in certain queries. Heavier use of the updated Bing could bring financial upside. Microsoft would gain $2 billion in additional revenue for every percentage point of revenue it picks up in the search-advertising market, Amy Hood, the company’s finance chief, said on Feb. 7.
Jefferies surveyed 900 consumers about the new Bing, and of the 127 who had tried it, 86% said they were impressed or very impressed, but just 17% said they would make Bing their new default search engine, according to a Monday note to clients.
People with Windows 11 PCs on version 22H2 can request the new version with the more intelligent Bing and the other additions by opening the Windows Update section of the Settings app and clicking the “Check for updates” button, Panay wrote in the blog post.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It’s a $60 billion business.
One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren’t universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say.
A growing number of parents are also turning to cloth diapers, but they only make up about 20% of the U.S. market.
ZymoChem is attacking the diaper problem from a different angle. Harshal Chokhawala, CEO of ZymoChem, said that 60% to 80% of a typical diaper consists of fossil-based plastics. And half of that is an ingredient called super absorbent polymer, or SAP.
“What we have created is a low carbon footprint bio-based and biodegradable version of this super absorbent polymer,” Chokhawala said.
ZymoChem, with operations in San Leandro, California, and Burlington, Vermont, invented this new type of absorbent by using a fermentation process to convert a renewable resource — sugar — from corn into biodegradable materials. It’s similar to making beer.
“We’re at a point now where we’re very close to being at cost parity with fossil based manufacturing of super absorbents,” said Chokhawala.
The company’s drop-in absorbents can be added into other diapers, which makes it different from environmentally conscious companies like Charlie Banana, Kudos and Hiro, which sell their own brand of diapers.
ZymoChem doesn’t yet have a diaper product on the market. But Lindy Fishburne, managing partner at Breakout Ventures and an investor in the company, says it’s a scalable model.
“Being able to build and grow with biology allows us to unlock a circular economy and a supply chain that is no longer petro-derived, which opens up the opportunities of where you can manufacture and how you secure supply chains,” Fishburne said.
Other investors include Toyota Ventures, GS Futures, KDT Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Lululemon. The company has raised a total of $35 million.
The Lululemon partnership shows that it’s not just about diapers. ZymoChem’s bio-based materials can also be used in other hygiene products and in bio-based nylon. Lululemon recently said it will use it in some of its leggings, which were traditionally made with petroleum.