Microsoft’s plan to retire Bing API and what it means for web search

Computing speaks to DuckDuckGo, Brave, MetaGer and Mojeek about Microsoft’s sudden move

Microsoft has announced it is to retire access to its Bing Search APIs on 11th August.

“Any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely, and the product will no longer be available for usage or new customer signup,” the company says in a brief post on its Azure Updates site.

“Customers may want to consider Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents.  Grounding with Bing Search allows Azure AI Agents to incorporate real-time public web data when generating responses with an LLM.”

In other words, Microsoft wants users of its search indexes to pivot instead to its AI models to generate responses.

This may seem a rather esoteric point, but Bing search APIs have long been used as a mainstay by “alternative” search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, sometimes in combination with other APIs and indexes. They may struggle to find alternatives before the August cut-off.

These alternative engines offer features such as increased privacy, additional functionality, or, in Ecosia’s case, promising to plant trees in return for using its service.

In terms of pure search functionality, many see moving to AI as a backward step. In March, a study found that major AI search engines are plagued by inaccuracy, frequently fabricating reference links, failing to provide sources when requested, and delivering incorrect information, particularly when citing news articles.

Microsoft increased the price of search API licences substantially in 2023 as it started integrating ChatGPT output into the results.

How will the scrapping of Bing API affect smaller search engines?

Computing asked a number of search engines what Microsoft’s move will mean for their businesses.

A report in Wired suggested that larger customers would be unaffected, and a spokesperson from DuckDuckGo, one of the best known alternative search engines, confirmed that to be the case. “This does not affect us”.

Dominik Hebeler of Germany-based privacy-focussed MetaGer, a smaller player, said there would be an impact, but added that he was not surprised by the announcement.

“We kind of expected this to happen since Microsoft increased prices for that API by a factor of five last year.”

He continued: “We think that generative AI is not able to replace a regular web search in its current state and kind of doubt that it will ever be. Of course, this technology has its advantages but they come together with a bunch of disadvantages. A co-existence is the way to go in our opinion.”

MetaGer is working on a solution based on Open Web Search that will allow companies to create their own indexes more cheaply. Hebeler noted that other search APIs exist beside Bing, adding that they will “hopefully keep a bunch of competitive search solutions alive including the traditional web search as we know it.”

One of those alternative APIs is provided by Brave Search, which previously used the Bing API but later created its own indexing system.

“This change would make the Brave Search API the only independent search API in the market [at scale] for anyone to access and build on top of search, since Google’s is not openly available,” claimed chief business officer Brian Brown.

“We anticipate that this new scarcity of search data providers may open more partnerships for us, from Bing API resellers, to LLMs, to major tech, cloud and Fortune 2000 companies.”

UK-based Mojeek, also builds its own indexes rather than relying on Bing or Google. CEO Colin Hayhurst said Microsoft shelving the Bing API was “not totally surprising” after the massive price hikes earlier.

“That change in 2023 abandoned the smaller search partners and scared the bigger ones. What will this do to them? I've heard that some of the bigger ones are OK, but who didn't make the cut? And how long do those that did have?”

Like Brown, Hayhurst was bullish about the prospects for independent search, anticipating that, along with the Kagi engine, others will integrate Mojeek’s API, having been “spooked” at the recent price rises. “We have made big strides in search quality and our API service in the last two years,” he said.

He was also scathing about the use of GenAI in pure search: “After ChatGPT came out our traffic started rising faster. Soon we might be the only web search (information retrieval) engine left. Then again, we are not chasing the ‘answer engine’ golden goose.”

Ecosia and Startpage (which uses Google’s API) had not responded to requests for comment at time of writing.