Chasing Rabbbits

🔎 Google Going Gone?

Search is splintering across apps and platforms—by niche and purpose—and the rise of AI is only going to accelerate this. Some people already see ChatGPT as a functional information search replacement (last I heard, the data collected for training stopped in 2021, so you may not want to use it for current events).

While Big G is issuing a code red over the chatbot, Microsoft has decided to embrace OpenAI (with a big money hug) and getting serious about shopping.

Meta is pulling any lever it can find to entice people to spend more time in its apps. TikTok isn't going anywhere (but neither is YouTube). And social media use just keeps climbing. Plus there are roughly 1,782,356 streaming services now. Amazon is trying to extend its role as infrastructure-of-online-retail outside its warehouse walls. And Apple Maps and Tumblr Ads (as Blaze) are bringing yet more alternatives to Google services to the market.

It's not just competition for time and attention, it's also regulation. Google (and/or YouTube) is in the crosshairs of France, Germany, W3C, a Seattle School District, and the US government.

Google needs traffic to live. Because that traffic drives ad clicks which drives revenue. It also survives on a healthy diet of cookies and cross-service data sharing to build robust user profiles. All of those things are in jeopardy because of items listed above and elsewhere.

Google isn't going to disappear over night, but its continued dominance and duopolist status is certainly less certain than it used to be.

#Google #essays #search