Is Google search getting worse? A viral post points to cracks in Alphabet’s search supremacy
![When every search result is sponsored [sturti/E+ via Getty Images]](https://cdn.robinhood.com/static_content/mwphzyq69oso/en-US/assets/files/1wvKb8qEwoL43mD2biZpXO_1_GettyImages-637242422.jpg)
About 2,640,000,000 results… But they’re all sponsored. This week, search-engine blogger DKB wrote a viral post claiming “Google Search Is Dying.” The argument: Google search results aren’t as relevant as they used to be because they’re cluttered with ads and SEO-optimized clickbait. But Google still dominates the search biz with 86% market share.
- Google has been the world’s largest search engine since 2000, two years after it was founded. And search is still its cash cow: ad revenues more than doubled in the past four years, boosting parent Alphabet to record sales last quarter.
- But some users are ditching Google for more “authentic” results. Consider a search for “best vacuum”: Google gives you a half-dozen ads and 700-word blog posts, while Reddit offers unvarnished reviews from recent buyers on r/VacuumCleaners.
Buried in the results… The search biz that made Alphabet huge could become a liability if users can’t easily find what they’re looking for, or don’t trust the results. And as Alphabet spent (and lost) billions on Google Cloud and Waymo over the past few years, its core search biz has run into obstacles:
- Growing competition from Microsoft’s Bing, China’s Baidu, and privacy-focused DuckDuckGo has cut into Google’s search market share by 5% since 2018.
- Global regulators have also launched several antitrust lawsuits against Google, accusing it of favoring its products in shopping results.
The search industry may be splintering… And Alphabet’s mountain of lawsuits could cut into its huge ad sales and give competitors a chance to take a slice of Google’s search share. There’s a reason people use “Google” as a verb. But as the internet becomes more decentralized, thanks to the rise of blockchain-backed communities, users could gravitate to new search options that reduce ad clutter and give more helpful results.