Is Google’s reign coming to an end? AI threatens the leading search engine

One of the questions raised by the boom of generative artificial intelligence was whether it would end the reign of search engines, dominated with an iron fist by Google. Two and a half years after the emergence of ChatGPT, signs are beginning to show that something is shifting.

In April, searches on Google made through Safari, Apple’s browser, fell for the first time in history, as reported by The Verge. And just on Thursday, it was revealed that OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, will launch an AI-powered web browser in the coming weeks, posing a challenge to the reign of Google Chrome, the most widely used browser in the world.

On May 7, when it became known that searches on Safari had dropped, shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fell by 7.5%, wiping out around $150 billion of its market capitalization. The reason: a senior Apple executive said the tech giant was “actively looking at” redesigning Safari to perform AI-powered searches, according to Bloomberg, even though this would mean losing $20 billion annually from revenue sharing. This move would further displace Google, the default search engine on iPhones and other Apple devices.

If people get used to interacting with a tool capable of structuring information and answering questions, the days of traditional search engines may be numbered. Asking questions is simply more convenient than typing keywords and clicking through links to find the right one. That shift in user behavior is already underway. A recent study found that 92% of U.S. high school students are now using generative AI, up from 66% in 2024. Another report by consulting firm Lily AI reveals that 40% of shoppers already rely on AI assistants — not search engines — to research products before making a purchase.

Last week brought renewed turbulence. Rumors are swirling that Apple may be looking to acquire Anthropic — the company founded by former OpenAI team member Dario Amodei — to breathe new life into Siri. It’s also been reported that Apple is interested in acquiring Perplexity AI, the developer behind the AI-powered search engine of the same name. In recent days, Apple has even been linked to OpenAI. Asked to comment on the accuracy of these reports, Apple sources have simply said the company does not respond to rumors. Still, all signs point in the same direction: bolstering its AI capabilities, which would signal a clear intent to challenge Google’s dominance.

At Google, there’s an awareness that the ground is shifting. The company refers to a “profound change” in how people use its search engine, which still holds a 90% market share, according to Statcounter. “People are coming to Google to ask more questions, including more complex, longer, and multimodal queries,” company sources explain. “We believe the future of Search is moving from information to intelligence.”

Google’s own data shows that signed-in users aged 18 to 24 conduct more searches daily than any other age group — an encouraging sign for the company. Visual search tools may be part of that appeal, such as Google Lens (which uses the phone’s camera) and the new “Circle to Search” feature, which lets users circle objects in images to start a search.

Financial impact

Google has built its empire on monetizing the data it collects from internet users. Its dominance in both search engines and web browsers— Chrome remains the most widely used browser in the world with a market share above 65%, according to Statista — has allowed the company to learn a great deal about our preferences. It has turned that information into revenue by using it to create targeted online ads: advertisers pay to reach the specific user profiles they consider their target audience.

For more than 15 years, Google and Meta have dominated the digital advertising market, accounting for 70% of total ad spending in Spain in 2021, according to Spain’s National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC). In recent years, Amazon has joined the ranks. Together, this triad controlled 60% of global digital ad revenue in 2023, according to Stocklytics data.

Google still leads the pack with a market share of roughly 35%, bringing in more than $264 billion in 2024. Meta follows with 19% and $160 billion in revenue that year. Amazon earned $56 billion in digital advertising revenue that same year.

Search engines and social media currently account for 44% of all advertising investment, according to consultancy Media Hotline — precisely because they allow advertisers to target their messages with pinpoint precision. But if people stop using search engines, or if usage declines — something that could happen if Apple drops Google as its default option — the business could suffer.

The same risk applies if online browsing habits shift away from traditional browsers and social networks toward generative AI tools. That’s why OpenAI’s move into the browser market, a project long considered by its CEO Sam Altman, is so significant. According to Reuters, the tool may not look like a traditional browser, but rather take the form of a conversational interface — more like ChatGPT than Chrome.

Do these developments threaten Google’s revenue? Is the impact already being felt? The company declined to respond to EL PAÍS.

“Google is prepared for a scenario in which it earns less from its search engine,” says Cecilia Rikap, professor of economics at University College London and research director of the institute’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). “The company’s biggest gamble for years has been the cloud, and it is using its advertising revenue to finance, and even subsidize, its expansion in that business at relatively lower prices than Amazon and Microsoft.”

For Rikap, who studies how big tech companies monopolize knowledge generation, the mere existence of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, such as Copilot (Microsoft), Llama (Meta), or Perplexity, proves “that it doesn’t have a monopoly on search.”

Google has integrated AI into its search engine, typically displaying an AI-generated response first—before the traditional list of search results. “In the last six months, the volume of searches with five or more words grew 1.5 times faster than shorter queries compared to the same period last year,” say sources at the technology company.

Meta, Google’s arch-rival in the advertising market, believes the rise of generative AI can boost its business. According to sources at the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg, almost all advertisers who rely on Meta use at least one of the AI tools available to them to monitor the performance of their ads.

Outplayed at its own game

The public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 disrupted the strategies of major tech giants. The widespread success of the first widely available generative AI tool forced the sector to respond. Just two months later, in January 2023, Microsoft announced a partnership with OpenAI that included a $10 billion investment.

Google, which had previously led the way in AI, reorganized its research divisions and created a super-lab that would eventually produce Gemini. It merged DeepMind, which had focused on more theoretical research, with Google Brain, its other major AI team. At the helm, it placed British scientist Demis Hassabis, who last year received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in recognition of his AI tool for understanding protein design.

The move revealed a sense of urgency to deliver results. Even though it was Google scientists who developed the Transformer model — the neural network architecture that underpins generative AI — it was OpenAI that cracked the code and brought the technology into the spotlight. OpenAI, in fact, was Elon Musk’s answer to challenge Google and DeepMind’s dominance in AI.

But Google has responded, and the Gemini family of models is still in the race — albeit without the dominant position its search engine once held.

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