Bing APIs, or application programming interfaces, let other search engines send in queries and get back an ad-free feed of results, spelling suggestions, or related searches that they can present to their own users. The service has become more or less the industry’s only option. Yahoo in 2009 stopped developing its own search engine technology and began licensing data from Bing instead. Google’s comparable API fell out of favor, as its output can differ from the search giant’s regular results, and for some use cases it requires displaying ads that it sells.

After Bing’s price hikes and the launch of its new chat mode, some search startups are racing to find alternatives. Brave, which provides 93 percent of its own results but still connects to Microsoft for image searches, estimates its Bing bill will triple, forcing the small company to speed up a “planned process of achieving total independence,” says its chief of search, Josep Pujol.

Kagi, a new search engine that charges a subscription fee but promises no ads or privacy compromises, is making its own transition. Bing previously offered an attractive balance between cost and quality, says founder Vladimir Prelovac. “The pricing change challenges our ability to offer a competitive and sustainable product,” he says. “We are actively exploring alternative search providers and expanding the investment into our own search infrastructure.” With no other tech giants active in search, he worries that the remaining options may lack Bing’s breadth. 

Microsoft’s new rule that slaps higher prices on customers that also use LLMs has startups concerned that Microsoft wants to lock them out of what might be the future of search—at a time when consumers are eagerly trying out new options such as Bing’s chat mode and ChatGPT. “They did not want us to innovate,” says Richard Socher, CEO and cofounder of search startup You.com, which he says has millions of users and has received $45 million in funding. “It's not viable anymore to run a search engine with them that innovates with LLMs. Maybe it shouldn't be allowed, but that's what they're currently doing.”

You.com launched a conversational interface called YouChat in December, shortly after the debut of ChatGPT, styling it as an “accomplishment engine.” YouChat can help users write computer code, generate images, and summarize academic research. “Those are things that you wouldn't have even asked your old search engine,” Socher says. 

You.com has had to make adjustments. It started sourcing results from elsewhere—Socher won’t provide details but says it includes systems developed internally—whenever they appear next to YouChat. “YouChat does not use Microsoft Bing web, news, video or other Microsoft Bing APIs in any manner,” a disclaimer on You.com reads. “Other web links, images, news, and videos on you.com are powered by Microsoft Bing.”

DuckDuckGo, one of the most prominent and heavily marketed search upstarts, earlier this month launched a feature that uses LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic to provide what it calls “instant answers” on certain topics using knowledge from sources such as Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo spokesperson Allison Goodman calls the offering “totally separate” from the company’s partnership with Microsoft and says “we are not affected by” the pricing increase.