Google’s AI Search is pushing users away, and Bing has a rare opening it has not seen in years. What happens next is up to Microsoft.

Google is destroying itself.

At Google I/O, the firm announced a range of new products that will doubtless be killed off in the coming years as each one flops and fails. Google is renowned for shipping junk, banking almost entirely on its YouTube acquisition, Android monopoly, and Google Search monopoly to dominate the airwaves. The firm has been sued by governments and regulators repeatedly for anti-competitive practices pertaining to Chrome, Google Search, and others, and is now intent on wiping out millions, maybe billions of livelihoods with its nihilistic AI push.

"Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

Indeed, the big news from Google I/O was that it will now be prioritizing AI search in its increasingly useless Google Search engine. The early integrations have already been a total catastrophe for general quality, but Google is going all in, chasing short-term shareholder hype over user experience. I would love nothing more than for all of this to blow up in their faces, but it'll only happen if a viable competitor rises up to replace it.

As of right now ... there is only one potential candidate.

Google Search is going AI-first, and the results so far have been hilarious, and disastrous

It's not the first time Google AI has been in the news for being atrocious. Since Google started dabbling with AI-powered summaries and answers, websites like good old Windows Central have lost tons of traffic. Google steals our content, built up over a decade, and repackages it into its AI. We don't have the cash to fight them for copyright, although other, bigger players are trying on our behalf.

In any case, it's really not about Windows Central or the impacts of AI on publishers here, despite my personal stake. It would be one thing if it reproduced our stolen content accurately. Unfortunately, this is often simply not the case.

You need only look across the internet for how Google's laughable AI summaries have been at delivering accurate answers and content. This is entirely a user experience problem, and because Google is so utterly dominant, it doesn't have to care.

Users realized last week that since Google replaced basically its entire search stack with AI, various search queries are now broken. The search box interprets some queries as chat prompts, leading to all sorts of hilarity and inconsistency. This is before you get into some of the dangerous misinformation Google's AI search delivers, from everything from bad medical advice to actively encouraging harm.

As such, "competing" search engines have seen a surge in users as of late, owing to Google's slide in quality. DuckDuckGo, for example, revealed last week that it has seen a 30% surge in installs following Google's nihilistic march towards mediocrity. 30% surge for DuckDuckGo sadly amounts to a drop of water in, well, a duck pond.

Side note: I also think it's funny that DuckDuckGo is leaning into anti-AI stuff when it, itself, uses AI. But I digress.

Regardless, Google has ~90% of the market as of writing. Despite the dearth in quality, Google has become a habit formed over decades. It's the default. It's culture. To Google is literally a verb — even if you're not actually using Google. And well, dozens of us aren't.

Well, maybe a few more than dozens. But could this mini exodus snowball? Perhaps only if the right player stepped up to the occasion. And in my mind, there's only one viable option.

It's time to return to a more human search engine

Last month, Bing announced a big milestone: 1 billion monthly active users during Microsoft’s Q3 FY2026 earnings call. I found myself a tad skeptical about this, as did many netizens. Bing search powers things like the Start Menu these days. How can Microsoft really brag about this when they're potentially using "accidental" queries through the Start Menu to reflect intent to use Bing?

Speaking to Bing sources, I learned that the figure above really is reflective of a new reality. Microsoft is measuring users with a clear intent to specifically use Bing here. Including traditional internet search queries, as well as engagement with links within those search results. Simply searching in the Start Menu for a folder or a program doesn't count towards this.

But still, a billion monthly active users is still small compared to Google, which boasts well over 5 billion according to estimates, and it's still hard to tell exactly what the delta is without more transparency on the methodology for some of these figures. Indeed, Google itself says that its AI search box now accounts for 2.5 billion monthly active users, which is double that of Bing.

The backlash to AI has been real, and it has been loud, although the general public at large more than likely doesn't care.

Everyone is yelling about AI constantly across every channel you can imagine, whether it's articles like this, social media, TV, and beyond. But the problem with AI search is, ironically, inherently human.

The authoritative way with which it seems to present information precludes verification. In researching this very article, I Googled how many monthly active users its search engine actually has, and the three cited sources in Google's AI summary didn't even mention the question I'd asked. Ironically, it was via a regular, non-AI Bing search that I actually found an authoritative source link on the actual topic I'd asked about.

For most, confirmation bias from an authoritative brand like Google is more than enough. And this is before we get into the problems of hostile prompt injections and recursive AI "incest," by which it starts training itself on increasingly inaccurate AI-produced content. Google Search is quick. Google AI search is even quicker. The result is a dumber population, which, in another article, I could argue is what these Tech Elites actually want.

But let's take a more optimistic view for fun: what if a company stepped up to the plate, offered a genuine, human-first alternative, and then marketed it as such?

Bing might only have 5% of the total search market share right now, but it's by far and away the #2 player in the space. Microsoft has already been pulling back from its useless AI features, and CEO Satya Nadella seems increasingly cognizant of the AI backlash overall.

If Microsoft bet on a human-first user experience and content instead of homogenous AI-generated slop, it could pivot its image overnight.

Nobody is suggesting that it should give up on AI completely. Neural networking tech is absolutely here to stay, and will most likely have some genuinely good applications in the future. It has clear enterprise applications, particularly in data summary. But for consumer use cases? For search, especially? We're not there yet.

There has to be a better way here. AI summaries can be useful, but only if the information they're being fed (and stealing) is actually of a high quality. Without that symbiosis, Google is racing towards the wholesale destruction of the free web. The destruction of information itself. And for what exactly? They already have more money than God. Nobody asked for this.

AI is destroying the quality of the entire internet, and Google is the tip of the poisoned spear. We are mired in digital junk, ballooning consumer tech prices, rife insider trading, data centers destroying communities, potential cognitive decline, and circular investments that might threaten to detonate the global economy. Google is all-in, and the product that made it a juggernaut, as well as the entire summation of the human-made internet, are the first victims.

While Google indulges in free-fall AI psychosis, Microsoft has a rare and historic opportunity to do something amazing here. Google indexed the free web, but Windows and PCs fostered its existence. Google is now threatening that. Google worked in symbiosis with the free internet for decades, but that has now ended. It's attempting to control the entire flow of information online through a single nexus and steal all of the opportunity on top.

Google panicked when Microsoft first introduced Bing's AI search summaries. Bing started this. Maybe it can finish it.

Will Microsoft rise to the occasion, or once again, let yet another major opportunity to do the right thing slip by? My cynicism says it'll be the former.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.