Microsoft opens up Bing access and adds chat history and export features
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during an event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Feb. 7, 2023.
Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft said Thursday that it’s dispensing with the waiting list it has had in place for the past three months for its revamped Bing search engine, allowing anyone with a Microsoft account to use it. The new Bing, revealed in February, features a chatbot smartened up with the GPT-4 artificial intelligence model from OpenAI that’s similar to the startup’s viral ChatGPT bot.
Google remains the leader in search advertising. Microsoft wants to become a more formidable challenger after introducing Bing in 2009, with help from OpenAI. Microsoft has said that for every percentage point of share it gains in the highly profitable search category, its revenue will increase by $2 billion.
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With its appearance in late November, ChatGPT has sparked a wave of interest in generative AI technologies that create text, images and other content in response to human input. Microsoft provides cloud services for ChatGPT and offers GPT-4 to businesses looking to draw on generative AI.
In addition to augmenting Bing with the GPT-4, Microsoft has announced plans to incorporate the AI model into its Microsoft 365 productivity software and bring out a chatbot for security practitioners, among other products. Google, for its part, is working to add generative AI to its search engine, and it has a language model rivaling GPT-4 that developers have begun using.
“We have really good, positive signal from the time we launched,” Divya Kumar, global head of marketing for search and AI at Microsoft, told CNBC in an interview. Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Bing had crossed 100 million daily active users.
But while Bing has taken share of consumer web searches, it has not won share of search revenue in the nearly three months since Microsoft introduced the new version during a press event on its Redmond, Washington, campus, Bernstein analysts led by Mark Shmulik wrote in a Wednesday note to clients.
“At its heights Bing hit #4 on the US iOS App download rank in early February,” the Bernstein analysts wrote, citing Apptopia data. “Following the launch of the new Bing, Bing’s total app download volume has increased by 4x. However, Bing download momentum declined throughout March and April.” Bernstein has the equivalent of buy ratings on Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft shares.
Now, Microsoft is bulking up Bing with more capabilities in addition to broadening access.
Microsoft is adding a way to get back to previous chat conversations, which ChatGPT has offered for months. It will provide a way to export chats to Microsoft Word documents. It also will start showing images and other media in chat messages when appropriate.
And over time, Bing will add integrations to third-party services such as OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha, enabling people to view and take action on current information when talking with the chatbot. OpenAI announced a similar concept called plug-ins for ChatGPT in March, but those wishing to try them must first join a waiting list.
Kumar said the company will provide more details on how developers can build for the Bing chatbot at its Microsoft Build developer conference, which starts on May 23.
People still must go through Microsoft’s Edge web browser on PCs or the Bing app on mobile devices in order to use the new Bing, including its chatbot. That means Google has yet to allow people to use the Bing chatbot from Google’s dominant Chrome browser. “We’re still early in the journey and were still learning,” Kumar said.
Edge has increased its share of the web browsing market every quarter for the past two years, Yusuf Mehdi, consumer marketing chief, wrote in a blog post. Microsoft includes Edge in its Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems, and the default search engine in Edge is Bing.
Microsoft is updating Edge so that when people open a result that appears during a Bing chat, the chat will move to a sidebar in Edge in order to keep the conversation going, Mehdi wrote.
WATCH: A.I. may ruin Alphabet’s only real business: Google Search, says CIC Wealth’s Malcolm Ethridge
George Kurtz, chief executive officer of Crowdstrike Inc., speaks during the Montgomery Summit in Santa Monica, California, U.S., on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
CrowdStrike shares fell 7% in extended trading on Tuesday after the security software maker issued a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast.
Here’s how the company did against LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: 73 cents, adjusted vs. 65 cents expected
- Revenue: $1.10 billion vs. $1.10 billion expected
Revenue increased by nearly 20% in the fiscal first quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. The company registered a net loss of $110.2 million, or 44 cents per share, compared with net income of $42.8 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
Costs rose in sales and marketing as well as in research and development and administration, partly because of a broad software outage last summer.
For the current quarter, CrowdStrike called for 82 cents to 84 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $1.14 billion to $1.15 million in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting 81 cents per share and $1.16 billion in revenue.
CrowdStrike bumped up its guidance for full-year earnings but maintained its expectation for revenue. The company now sees $3.44 to $3.56 in adjusted earnings per share, with $4.74 billion to $4.81 billion in revenue. The LSEG consensus was $3.43 per share and $4.77 billion in revenue. The earnings guidance provided in March was $3.33 to $3.45 in adjusted earnings per share.
Also on Tuesday, CrowdStrike said it had earmarked $1 billion for share buybacks.
“Today’s announced share repurchase reflects our confidence in CrowdStrike’s future and unwavering mission of stopping breaches,” CEO George Kurtz said in the statement.
As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was up 43% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index had gained less than 2%.
Executives will discuss the results on a conference call with analysts starting at 5 p.m. ET.
WATCH: Trade Tracker: Malcolm Ethridge buys more CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Spotify and Oracle
An attendee wearing a cow costume while playing Mario Kart World by Nintendo Switch 2 during the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience at the Excel London international exhibition and convention centre in London on April 11, 2025.
Isabel Infantes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Tuesday talked up the capabilities of Nintendo‘s new Switch 2, days before the long-awaited console is set to hit store shelves.
In a video posted by Nintendo, Huang called the chip inside the Switch 2 “unlike anything we’ve built before.”
“It brings together three breakthroughs: The most advanced graphics ever in a mobile device, full hardware ray tracing, high dynamic range for brighter highlights and deeper shadows, and an architecture that supports backward compatibility,” Huang said.
He added that the console has dedicated artificial intelligence processors to “sharpen, animate and enhance gameplay in real time.”
Huang’s comments come as Nintendo prepares to release the Switch 2 on Thursday. The Switch 2 is Nintendo’s first new console in eight years, and it is expected to be a bigger and faster version of its predecessor. The device costs $449.99.
Huang also paid tribute to the vision of former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who died before the original Switch was released.
“Switch 2 is more than a new console,” Huang said. “It’s a new chapter worthy of Iwata Son’s vision.”
WATCH: Nintendo expects to sell 15 million units of the Switch 2
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