Over the past two decades, Google's search engine has almost become synonymous with internet search. However, in recent years, with changes in user habits, Google has been facing a series of pressures from competitors.

According to eMarketer's predictions, by 2025, Google's share in the USA search advertising market will fall below 50% for the first time. Google's future seems to be on the edge.

Among them, one of the biggest issues is the significant change in search habits of the younger generation. In the past, users would turn to Google for any questions, but now, more and more people are starting to turn to other platforms and rely on ai for searching.

With the continuous advancement of technology, whether Google can find new growth points will determine if it can continue to dominate the search engine and digital advertising markets in the future.

The dominance of the search engine is shaken.

According to statistics, amazon's search engine advertising revenue has rapidly grown, making it one of Google's biggest competitors. When people shop, searching on amazon has become their first choice.

In addition, with the rise of the short video platform TikTok, advertisers have noticed that 23% of users start searching for content within 30 seconds of opening the app, with a global daily search volume reaching 3 billion times.

A greater challenge comes from the rapid development of ai. Especially with products like OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is redefining how search engines operate. These "response engines" can provide direct answers to users without relying on traditional search result links.

Most notably, the ai search engine Perplexity, co-founded by former OpenAI research scientist Aravind Srinivas and several partners, has surpassed 10 million MAU (monthly active users) within just two years, despite having no user base initially.

As ai becomes more widespread in various fields, the traditional model of Google's search engine faces severe challenges. Melissa Schilling from NYU Stern School of Business points out:

"Google seems to be losing its footing in the search field until the emergence of ai, which is now as transformative for search as walmart's e-commerce is for retail trade."

Google appears to be somewhat passive in this ai competition. Although the company launched ai-based search summaries for usa users earlier this year, it remains to be seen whether these measures can effectively turn the situation around.

The proliferation of ai-generated content has led to a decline in website traffic and advertising revenue.

In addition to pressure from competitors, the flood of ai-generated content presents a major challenge for Google.

As ai technology becomes more prevalent, an increasing amount of internet content is generated by machines, with varying levels of quality, which may even conflict with the optimization rules of search engines.

One of Google's core competencies has always been its ability to provide accurate and relevant search results. However, as the amount of ai content increases, the quality of search results has noticeably declined, which not only diminishes user experience but may also lead users to gradually lose trust in Google Search.

In this context, Google's advertising revenue is also under pressure, as more and more users begin to avoid clicking on ads in search results, opting instead to rely on ai-generated summaries for direct answers.

According to data from the advertising platform Skai, although Google reported strong revenue growth in the last quarter, the speed at which people clicked on ads has dropped by 8% compared to last year. This may be due to Google's direct display of ai summaries in search results, reducing users' willingness to click on ads. Research by the advertising sales company Raptive also indicates that after Google launched ai search summaries, publishers' revenue could suffer losses of up to 2 billion dollars.

Despite facing numerous challenges, Google remains one of the most powerful technology companies globally. Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie believes that while ai and other competitive forces may ultimately replace Google, its dominant position is unlikely to vanish easily.

“People tend to get used to using certain platforms; unless a superior alternative appears, Google will maintain its market leadership for some time.”