Why Bing Overtook Baidu: The AI-Powered Rise of China’s Top Desktop Search Engine

StatCounter data shows that in April 2023 Microsoft’s Bing achieved a historic high in China’s desktop search market, reaching a 37.4% share and overtaking Baidu to become the leading desktop search engine.

Baidu’s share fell to 27.01%, leaving a ten‑percentage‑point gap between the two.

The next four search engines by market share are Sogou (16.36%), Yandex (7.45%), Haosou (6.25%) and Google (5.2%).

Bing is not just a search engine; it is deeply integrated into Microsoft’s ecosystem, becoming the fourth major product line after Windows, Office, and Xbox.

Microsoft continuously injects the latest AI technologies into Bing. On February 8, 2023, the new Bing adopted an upgraded GPT‑3.5 model, and on March 15, Microsoft confirmed that the new Bing is running GPT‑4.

On May 22, the Bing Chat team announced a significant update: the per‑message character limit was doubled from 2,000 to 4,000 characters, addressing previous criticism that the limit constrained complex queries.

Although higher limits were once thought to potentially confuse the AI, Microsoft now believes the chatbot can handle longer inputs without issue after months of development and user feedback.

Old‑style search engines are on the brink of extinction. DeepMind co‑founder Mustafa Suleyman warned that traditional search will fundamentally change within a decade, shifting toward conversational and interactive experiences.

Microsoft has also rolled out long‑awaited features such as chat history for all users and new export options that let users save conversations as Word, plain‑text, or PDF files.