Google, Microsoft Expand AI-Driven Search Capabilities

  • 03/17/25
Aspect Google's Approach Microsoft's Approach
AI Strategy in Search Embedding AI directly into traditional search Integrating AI as a separate assistant alongside search
Implementation AI Overviews (formerly SGE) — AI-generated summaries above search results Bing AI Chat & Copilot Search — AI chat alongside search, with an experimental full-AI mode
Search Experience AI summaries integrated into search but still links to sources Conversational AI assistant that can refine queries and generate content
Underlying AI Model Gemini AI (Google's proprietary model) OpenAI's GPT-4 & custom Microsoft models
Market Positioning Defensive move — Protecting Google Search's dominance from AI disruption Aggressive push — Using AI to gain search market share against Google
AI Integration Beyond Search Deep AI embedding into Google products like Gmail, Docs, and YouTube AI copilots across Microsoft products (Windows, Edge, Office, Teams)
Monetization Keeping ads prominent in AI Overviews Experimenting with ads inside AI chat and search

Taking those different approaches into account, it's no wonder that Google's search-specific hegemony hasn't suffered much. Statista tracks global market share of leading search engines and recently reported: "In January 2025, the online search engine Bing accounted for 4.04 percent of the global search market across all devices, while market leader Google held a search traffic share of around 89.62 percent. Meanwhile, Yandex's market share was 2.62 percent, while Yahoo! represented around 1.34 percent."

For February 2025, meanwhile, StatCounter reported similar numbers: Google, 90.15%; Bing, 3.95%; YANDEX, 2.29%; Yahoo! 1.29%; DuckDuckGo, 0.7%; Baidu, 0.66%.


About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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