Microsoft is shutting down access to Bing search results for third-party developers, The Verge reports, writes UNN.
Details
The software maker reportedly announced the change "quietly" earlier this week, noting that the Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11 and that "any existing Bing Search API instances will be completely retired and the product will no longer be available for use or new customer registration."
This sudden removal of the Bing Search API is reported to affect third-party app developers and competing search engines that connect to Microsoft's search results to support their services.
Microsoft is now recommending that developers use "grounding with Bing search as part of Azure AI agents" as a replacement, allowing chatbots to interact with web data from Bing.
Wired reports that some large Bing API customers will retain access to the service after the August 11 shutdown. DuckDuckGo uses Bing to power its search engine, and the company has confirmed that it will still have access. However, other smaller developers are not so lucky, the publication notes.
Microsoft's move to shut down access to the Bing Search API comes as the company has been raising prices for data access in recent years, and just a week before Microsoft's big Build developer conference. It also came just days after the US Department of Justice asked the court to split up Google's advertising technology empire.