India is one of the top three markets for AI-Powered Bing preview

India has been chosen as one of the top three markets for Microsoft's new Bing preview, according to a senior official at the company.

The company says it now has "over 100 million daily activities on Bing and is available in 169 countries with India being one of the top three markets in this new Bing preview."

Recall that Microsoft launched its new Bing preview, powered by ChatGPT, the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, earlier this year – which can respond to complicated questions which regular searches cannot do and has a much better offering for users.

The AI tool saw up to 100 million users sign up in February 2023. Although it is unclear how many Bing users there are in India, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer says Indian users prefer Bing as a new way to search, not just the answers, but the ability to chat and search and do social entertainment.

According to data from StatCounter, Bing accounts for a meagre 1% of the search engine market in India compared to Google's 98.5% share. Globally, Bing accounts for just 8.8% of the global search market, while market leader Google had a share of around 85%, as of January 2023.

As Bing continues trailing behind in the search market, it remains to be seen if its AI investments would help it gain more popularity, grow its search market share, and pose a threat to Google's long-standing dominance in the Indian and global search engine market.