The outage has highlighted the web's dependence on a few tech companies, and the potential widespread impact when an API goes down. Despite Google's dominance in web search, many services are increasingly reliant on Bing's API. Microsoft has not yet commented on the outage.
Key takeaways:
- Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, experienced an outage affecting its application programming interface (API), which also impacted other services that rely on Bing.
- Alternative search engines DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, which use Bing's search results, were unable to return any search results during the outage.
- Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT Plus subscribers, who have the ability to perform web searches, also experienced errors during the outage.
- The outage highlights the web's dependence on a handful of tech companies and the increasingly important role of Bing’s API, despite Google's dominance in web search.