Summary: Microsoft has sacked a lot of Bing staff this year; judging by trends (a lack of acceptance of mere hype), we should expect a lot more

TODAY we're hearing of yet more Microsoft layoffs (people are back from summer vacation) and we'll have more information some time soon. Yesterday we wrote about layoffs at Microsoft's close partners and there's more where the lobbyists are (funded by Ballmer and Gates). To quote Ryan, "Microsoft Astroturfing Group just laid off 35 people."

Any day now we should expect August data about the collapse of connections to openai.com -- partly a self-inflicted wound as per this talk. They're just losing lots and lots of money.

"Infusing manufactured hype and buzzwords into various brands is no panacea."Months ago the Microsoft-sponsored media told us repeatedly that ChatGPT was a very potent threat to Google's dominance in search, but nothing of this kind actually happened. Infusing manufactured hype and buzzwords into various brands is no panacea.

This month, Bing "market share" fell from over 3% to just 2.7%. Bing had 3.6% market share, according to this Web survey, when ChatGPT was first introduced. Watch out, Google! "Bing Chat" is truly a "killer".

"Bing has always had trouble gaining users," Ryan notes. "It even bribes people to use it. And they don't. They've had more success with DuckDuckGo, which is just a very small office because it's Bing results and Microsoft hosted. It's like some sort of a fake company propped up to take branding off Bing so people don't even know they use it."

DuckDuckGo is also losing a lot of share. ⬆