On Thursday, Europe experienced a significant disruption in the functionality of Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, lasting several hours. Initial observations indicated a complete inability to conduct web searches. However, the issue has now been resolved, and search results are loading correctly.
This disruption extended to Bing’s application programming interface (API), impacting numerous services dependent on Bing for their operations.
The incident concluded around 7:20 am Pacific Time, with services gradually resuming after an outage exceeding five hours.
During the downtime, alternative search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, which utilize Bing’s search results, were unable to deliver any search outcomes. Moreover, Microsoft Copilot was also non-functional. Subscribers of ChatGPT Plus, who have the capability to perform web searches, encountered errors when attempting to conduct searches.
Recent outages once again spotlight the web’s reliance on a select group of technology companies. The failure of a single API can significantly disrupt numerous services.
This instance, in particular, highlighted the growing significance of Bing’s API. Although Google continues to lead in web search, a growing number of services now depend on Bing’s API.
Attempts to reach Microsoft for comment on the outage were unsuccessful at this time.
