Some 99,000 times a second, people around the world use Google to search the Internet.
Now, however, the dominance of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, is under attack. The outcome may determine how people search for information online.
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By rolling out AI Overview, Google is in effect competing with its own internet search results. This comes as lawsuits and AI rivals threaten Google’s dominance.
Alphabet’s immediate challenge is legal. The Justice Department, which finished closing arguments this month in its first case against the company, has charged Alphabet with illegally paying companies to ensure its Google search engine is the default on smartphones and web browsers. A second antitrust trial about Alphabet’s ad practices looms this fall.
The longer-term threat is technological. Some analysts suggest that artificial intelligence (AI) will erode Google’s dominance in search. That’s not a foregone conclusion for the $2.2 trillion company. But the twin threats put Alphabet in an awkward position.
At a time when increased government scrutiny might tempt Google to slow or curb its most aggressive moves, the rapid development of AI is forcing the company to move fast.
“There’s an AI arms race,” says Chris Rodgers, founder and CEO of Colorado-based CSP, a company that helps businesses get noticed on the Internet. “It is going to drive big changes in search.”
Some 99,000 times a second, people use a single company’s technology to search the Internet. It’s so commonplace that computer users don’t call it a “search.’’ They “Google” – or “googlear” (Spanish) or “Googul” (Arabic) – a topic.
Now, however, the dominance of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, is under attack. Legally and technologically, the company that has easily beat back challengers since its founding in 1998, faces perhaps its biggest threat yet. And the outcome may determine how people search for information online.
Alphabet’s immediate challenge is legal. This month, the Justice Department wrapped up its case with a closing argument that Alphabet illegally paid other companies to ensure its Google search engine would be the default option on the iPhone and other smartphones and web browsers. A second antitrust trial about Alphabet’s ad practices looms this fall.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
By rolling out AI Overview, Google is in effect competing with its own internet search results. This comes as lawsuits and AI rivals threaten Google’s dominance.
AI may spur rapid change in search
The longer-term threat is technological. For the better part of a year, analysts have suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) will erode Google’s search dominance. But that’s not a foregone conclusion for the hugely profitable $2.2 trillion company.
Still, the twin legal threats put Alphabet in an awkward position. At a time when increased government scrutiny might tempt Google to slow or curb aggressive moves, the rapid development of AI is forcing the company to move fast. To keep up with competitors, management may have to run, not walk, on the eggshells of legal risk.
“There’s an AI arms race,” says Chris Rodgers, founder and CEO of Colorado-based CSP, a company that helps businesses get noticed on the Internet. “It is going to drive big changes in search.”
Exactly how quickly that change comes is anybody’s guess. Consumers may balk at trusting AI chatbots that sometimes get it wrong. Still, it’s clear today’s search model is ripe for change.
“Google shows you, like, 10 links – well, like 13 ads and then 10 links – and that’s one way to find information,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on a Lex Fridman podcast last month. “Maybe there’s just some much better way to help people find and act on and synthesize information.”
Are AI-generated search results reliable yet?
OpenAI poses one of the most potent challenges to Alphabet’s dominance. The company has been a step ahead of Google ever since it released its chatbot, ChatGPT, late in 2022. Alphabet’s Gemini chatbot went public a year later and faces a number of well-funded competitors from the likes of Amazon, Meta, and others.
The challenge for these companies is that none of their chatbots is accurate enough to provide consistently reliable answers the way a Google search does. Nor do they have anywhere near the search experience or training data that Alphabet has meticulously acquired over nearly three decades. Alphabet’s challenge is that by incorporating AI into search it may cut into its traditional search business, which last quarter generated more than half the company’s sales.
Nevertheless, Alphabet is forging ahead by pushing Gemini into all its products. At its developers’ conference this week, it announced it was rolling out AI Overviews, a feature that synthesizes even complex questions into a categorized page of simplified answers. In one demo, it displayed four top-rated pilates studios within a half-hour walk of Boston’s Beacon Hill and a map of the route. In another, it suggested specific remedies from a user’s video of an old-fashioned record player that wasn’t working correctly.
The technology wasn’t foolproof. Gemini suggested opening the back of a film camera as one solution for the film being stuck. But many Wall Street analysts remain upbeat that Google can solve these problems and are raising their profit forecasts for the company, not lowering them.
Google’s decline: Possible but not inevitable
“Google has the upper hand” versus OpenAI, Gene Munster, managing partner with tech-investment firm Deepwater Asset Management, tweeted earlier this week. He pointed to the company’s 25 years of search data to train its AI models, global distribution, and huge infrastructure as big advantages over its competitors.
“So far, I don’t see signs that [the competitors] are really moving the needle,” says Tim Lee, author of the Understanding AI newsletter.
Google’s legal jeopardy is more pressing. A loss in the current contracting case could mean the company could no longer pay Apple to make Google search the default option on the iPhone – the potential erosion of a huge base of users. A loss in the digital advertising technology case this fall could strike at the heart of that Google search revenue, which is ad-based. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)
The last time a U.S. company faced such intense antitrust scrutiny – Microsoft in 1998 – the lawsuit distracted management and caused it to curb some of its aggressive behaviors.
“Google is not out of the woods,” says Shane Greenstein, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. “There’s a lot of speculation about where the future growth comes from.”
Tyler Fields is your internet guru, delving into the latest trends, developments, and issues shaping the online world. With a focus on internet culture, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies, Tyler keeps readers informed about the dynamic landscape of the internet and its impact on our digital lives.
