Is AI About to Redefine the Way We Search Online?

Apple senior vice director for services Eddy Cue reportedly said search volume on the Apple Safari browser, where Google vs ChatGPT clash as the primary AI disrupting search engines decreased to the lowest level in April. This was blamed on the rise in popularity of AI alternatives. 1 2

Based on Cue, Apple is considering including AI search tools such as those offered by OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic to its products at sometime in the near future.

Alphabet's shares Alphabet plunged by more than 7% Wednesday, leading S&P 500's droprs.

A Shifting Landscape for Search

The question of Google’s dominance in search has been in the news on Wall Street ever since 2022 when OpenAI's ChatGPT was a major player on the scene. Analysts instantly began to speculate that generative AI search engines would replace search engines as users are the most popular source for research and data.

For some market analysts Cue's comments are another example of this trend. "Search is shifting away from the traditional blue-link results page that we've loved for the past 25 years, to a simplified artificial intelligence impact on search," wrote Gene Munster, Managing Partner at Deepwater Asset Management, in an email to X. He said the new model has two issues that are a challenge for Google: "First, the model for monetizing sponsored ads must be rethought. In addition, Google Search has new competitors such as OpenAI, Grok, Perplexity etc."

Google Reinforcing Its Big Advantage

AI vs Google Search: Alphabet has a huge advantage over its AI-first rivals. Google's share of worldwide search traffic is thought to be around 90 percent. The future of Google Search engine Bing can be estimated to be receiving less than 4% of queries.