AI's Impact on Tech: Bing's Market Drop, Midjourney Chinese Beta, and Stack Overflow Traffic Decline

IT Expert Chen Hao Passes Away

Renowned IT architect Chen Hao, known as "Left Ear Mouse", with over 20 years of experience in internet and finance architecture, former senior architect at Alibaba Cloud, Tmall development director, Amazon senior R&D manager, and Thomson Reuters infrastructure architect, died of a heart attack at age 47.

Alibaba DAMO Lab Autonomous Driving Layoffs

Recent reports indicate that Alibaba's DAMO Academy autonomous driving lab is cutting about 70% of its staff. Approximately 200 of the 300‑plus employees were laid off, while around 80‑90 were transferred to the Cainiao group under a new team led by senior engineer Qingquan.

Bing Market Share Declines Despite AI Integration

Microsoft Bing's desktop search market share fell to 7.14% in April, down from its peak of 9.92% before ChatGPT, while Google retains about 86.71%. Although Bing's traffic grew 15.8% after adding AI features, overall market share remains lower.

Midjourney Chinese Beta Launches on QQ

Midjourney AI has released a Chinese version now in internal testing on QQ, offering 25 free image generations per user. New features include upscale, variation, remix, image prompt, direct messaging to the bot, and a mobile gallery.

Stack Overflow Traffic Drops as Developers Turn to AI Coding Tools

SimilarWeb data shows a steady decline in Stack Overflow visits, averaging a 6% monthly drop since January 2022 and a 13.9% fall in March, attributed to the rise of AI coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot, AWS CodeWhisperer, and Google Bard.