Bing Chat hits 1B chats, heads to third-party browsers

Six months after blowing up the search landscape, Microsoft is taking a victory lap.

The tech giant marked the six-month milestone of the AI-powered Bing and Edge, sharing some massive numbers. Users have engaged in over 1 billion chats and generated more than 750 million images via Bing Image Creator, powered by OpenAI's DALL-E models. Meanwhile, the Edge browser just logged its ninth consecutive quarter of growth.

Bing breaks free from Edge

The biggest piece of news tucked inside the anniversary post is that you will no longer need to fire up Edge just to talk to Bing. Microsoft confirmed that AI-powered Bing is officially rolling out to third-party browsers on both desktop and mobile.

There is a catch, of course. Microsoft noted that while third-party browsers like Chrome and Safari will support summarized answers and image creation, Edge will retain the premium experience. Users on Edge will get longer conversations, full chat history, and sidebar integrations that non-Edge users will miss out on.

Microsoft also highlighted several key features added over the last few months. Chat now supports Multimodal Visual Search, allowing users to upload photos—like snapping a picture of ingredients in the fridge to ask for lunch recipes. Dark mode has finally arrived across desktop, mobile, and Bing Chat Enterprise. For corporate clients, Bing Chat Enterprise provides commercial data protection, ensuring employee queries are not leaked or used to train models.

Across the wider ecosystem, Bing has pushed into the SwiftKey keyboard with search, chat, and tone adjustment, while Windows Copilot is now rolling out to Windows Insiders. Up next for the coming months: rolling out Bing Chat third-party plug-ins.

Why it matters

Opening Bing to third-party browsers is a necessary reality check for Microsoft.

Locking Bing Chat behind Edge helped juice browser adoption for a few quarters, but it also capped the product's ultimate ceiling. Google Chrome owns over 60 percent of the browser market; forcing users to change default desktop habits just to try an AI search engine was never a sustainable strategy to steal real market share from Google. Now, any regular user can test drive frontier-level AI without leaving their comfort zone.

However, we think gimping the third-party experience by capping conversation limits and withholding chat history is a risky half-measure. If a Chrome user encounters frustrating limits on Bing, they are far more likely to retreat to ChatGPT or standard Google search than download Edge.

Still, 1 billion chats and 750 million images prove conversational search is far more than a passing gimmick. As Microsoft preps plug-in integration for the next six months, the battle to turn the search bar into an action engine is heating up fast.