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Turns Out Microsoft Chatbots Are, Indeed, a Passing Fad (Userbase Down Sharply)

ChatGPT wasn't just hype, it was a marketing gimmick only made possible by massively underutilised (unsold) Azure capacity. Don't fall for the idea that ChatGPT was about LLMs. In short, it is about turning empty, money-losing server farms into advertising.

ChatGPT's Success Hits a Speed Bump With Decreasing Traffic: According to analytics firm Similarweb, in June there was a 9.7% decrease from the previous month in desktop traffic, and a 5.7% decrease in mobile traffic. The amount of time visitors spent on the website dropped by 8.5%. Senior Insights Manager at Similarweb, David Carr believes this is indicative of the chatbot's novelty beginning to wear off. These stats were accompanied by a decrease in app downloads, more specifically those of ChatGPT, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria. Despite their phenomenal growth, they now appear to be hitting a plateau. The decrease in traffic has been echoed by Bank of America analysts, who explain that visits to ChatGPT were down around 11% per week in June, to 51 million from the previous month. BofA analyst Justin Post believes that app downloads of both ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing (which includes a ChatGPT-based chatbot in the US) decreased 38%, with Bing's market share decreasing 40 basis points to around 2.8%. This was juxtaposed by Google which has increased their search engine market share very slightly, now over 92%.



Summary: As we've predicted all along, since the start of this year in fact, ChatGPT was all hype and it is going away; once the inertia is gone there's no comeback foreseen as rumours say the next massive round of Microsoft layoffs starts next week (can Microsoft distract from it?) and there's another downgrade

13 hours ago in Forbes:

Hallmark of Ponzi schemes or pump and dump: Something amazing is happening with technology stocks. They are getting downgraded, they are reporting lousy financial results, and they are still going up. Microsoft (MSFT) was front and center on Wednesday after executives at the Redmond, Wash.-based software reported mixed financial results for the second quarter, but guided analyst forecasts lower for the rest of the year. After collapsing at the open, Microsoft shares slowly rallied to near unchanged at the close.

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