Google executives are concerned about the decline in browser search traffic and revenue due to the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the popularity of marketplaces, and the deterioration of the quality of Google search information, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) writes in an article titled “Google is for old people. That’s Google’s problem.”
“If Google were a ship, it would be the Titanic hours before it hit an iceberg — high in the air, supposedly unsinkable, and ready to face a force of nature that could make its name synonymous with disaster.
The trends against Google are so numerous and interconnected that the Justice Department’s attempt to liquidate the company, details of which were revealed on November 20, may be the least of its problems,” the newspaper writes.
The newspaper cites a forecast from the eMarketer platform, according to which Google’s share of the American search advertising market will fall below 50% in 2025 for the first time since the company began tracking it.
The publication notes that currently, “the younger generation uses other platforms to collect information,” especially AI. For example, OpenAI has added web search to ChatGPT. Meta Platforms intends to create its own search engine. “Even chatbots with artificial intelligence that cannot search the web are increasingly capable of solving many problems,” and Microsoft and Apple are integrating them into their operating systems, the newspaper adds.
Moreover, Amazon earns billions of dollars from advertisers because users go directly to the marketplace when choosing products, bypassing the Google search engine. According to the advertising platform Skai, the number of clicks on Google ads has decreased by 8% compared to last year.
Google’s popularity is also threatened by the fact that search results in general are declining due to the spread of AI-generated content.
Recall that on November 20, the US Department of Justice sent its recommendations to the Federal Court for the District of Columbia on how to eliminate Google’s monopoly in the search engine market. The company is being asked to sell the Chrome browser and also to refrain from investing in or buying assets in the search field, including those based on artificial intelligence, for five years.
The US Department of Justice notes that Google maintained its monopoly for more than a decade using anticompetitive practices. The company manipulated control over the Android operating system and the Chrome browser so that Google became a virtually universal default search engine, and search became the only access point to the Internet through which the company collected user data and improved ad targeting.