Could Google’s dominance of online search soon end? This is what several worrying signs suggest for the Mountain View giant. While Apple and other major tech players are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, Google’s historical model is showing signs of running out of steam. Between the emergence of new uses and the deterioration in the quality of results, the emblematic search engine is facing unprecedented challenges.
The beginning of the end for Google Search hegemony
Google’s situation is strangely reminiscent of that of Facebook a few years ago: an ultra-dominant position which seemed unassailable, but which gradually finds itself weakened by the evolution of uses. As reported by the Wall Street Journal in an in-depth analysis, Google’s market share in online search advertising is expected to fall below the symbolic 50% mark in 2025 in the United States, a historic first. This erosion can be explained in particular by the rise of Amazon, which captures a growing share of shopping searches, but also by the emergence of TikTok as an alternative for the younger generation. The Chinese social network claims that 23% of its users search within the first 30 seconds after opening the app.
AI, existential threat to the Google model
The biggest threat to Google may well come from generative artificial intelligence. The integration of web search capabilities into ChatGPT by OpenAI or Perplexity, Meta’s work on its own search engine, or the efforts of Apple and Microsoft to integrate AI directly into their operating systems, all constitute major challenges. The very quality of Google’s results is deteriorating, with a proliferation of AI-generated content and advertising overload that harms the user experience. A significant change that has not gone unnoticed internally, as evidenced by the recent departure of Prabhakar Raghavan, vice-president in charge of research and advertising.
For Google, the issue is crucial because its search engine still represents half of its turnover, a dependence comparable to that of Apple on the iPhone. The Mountain View firm is not inactive in the face of these threats, particularly with the deployment of its own AI solutions such as automatic summaries in search results with Gemini. But this strategy could prove to be a double-edged sword: by reducing the need to click on links, it risks accelerating the decline of the web ecosystem on which it depends. According to a study by Authoritas, these AI-generated responses could disrupt site rankings and traffic, while Raptive estimates that this development could cost publishers up to $2 billion in revenue.
If the Google empire is not yet close to collapse, as Professor David Yoffie of Harvard Business School points out, these profound changes in the digital landscape could have consequences faster and more devastating than the ongoing antitrust lawsuits . To survive, Google will have to demonstrate agility and reinvent its model, while preserving the colossal revenues that finance its other innovative projects like Waymo. Youtube and Maps could be other growth levers even though Chrome and Android are close to a split in the United States. Google will have to completely reinvent its business. A major challenge for the tech giant which, like the Titanic, is navigating through troubled waters.
