Microsoft shuts off Bing Search APIs and recommends switching to AI

Microsoft is shutting off access to its Bing Search results for third-party developers. The software maker quietly announced the change earlier this week, noting that Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11th and that “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.”

This abrupt removal of the Bing Search APIs will impact third-party app developers and rival search engines that tap into Microsoft’s search results to power their services. Microsoft is now recommending that developers use “grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents” as a replacement, which lets chatbots interact with web data from Bing.

Wired reports that some big customers of Bing’s APIs will retain access to the service after the August 11th cutoff. DuckDuckGo uses Bing to power its search engine, and it has confirmed that it will still have access. Other smaller developers won’t be so lucky, though.

Microsoft’s move to cut off access to Bing Search APIs comes after the company has been hiking prices to access the data in recent years, and just a week before Microsoft’s big Build developer conference. It also comes just days after the US Department of Justice asked a court to split up Google’s ad tech empire.