Here’s why AI search engines really can’t kill Google

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Here’s why AI search engines really can’t kill Google

A search engine is much more than a search engine, and AI still can’t quite keep up.

www.theverge.com

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Here’s why AI search engines really can’t kill Google​

The AI search tools are getting better — but they don’t yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them.​

By David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

Mar 26, 2024, 8:00 AM EDT

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride / The Verge

AI is coming for the search business. Or so we’re told. As Google seems to keep getting worse, and tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot seem to keep getting better, we appear to be barreling toward a new way to find and consume information online. Companies like Perplexity and You.com are pitching themselves as next-gen search products, and even Google and Bing are making huge bets that AI is the future of search. Bye bye, 10 blue links; hello direct answers to all my weird questions about the world.

But the thing you have to understand about a search engine is that a search engine is many things. For all the people using Google to find important and hard-to-access scientific information, orders of magnitude more are using it to find their email inbox, get to Walmart’s website, or remember who was president before Hoover. And then there’s my favorite fact of all: that a vast number of people every year go to Google and type “google” into the search box. We mostly talk about Google as a research tool, but in reality, it’s asked to do anything and everything you can think of, billions of times a day.

The real question in front of all these would-be Google killers, then, is not how well they can find information. It’s how well they can do everything Google does. So I decided to put some of the best new AI products to the real test: I grabbed the latest list of most-Googled queries and questions according to the SEO research firm Ahrefs and plugged them into various AI tools. In some instances, I found that these language model-based bots are genuinely more useful than a page of Google results. But in most cases, I discovered exactly how hard it will be for anything — AI or otherwise — to replace Google at the center of the web.

People who work in search always say there are basically three types of queries. First and most popular is navigation, which is just people typing the name of a website to get to that website. Virtually all of the top queries on Google, from “youtube” to “wordle” to “yahoo mail,” are navigation queries. In actual reality, this is a search engine’s primary job: to get you to a website.

In actual reality, a search engine’s primary job is to get you to a website

For navigational queries, AI search engines are universally worse than Google. When you do a navigational Google search, it’s exceedingly rare that the first result isn’t the one you’re looking for — sure, it’s odd to show you all those results when what Google should actually do is just take you directly to amazon.com or whatever, but it’s fast and it’s rarely wrong. The AI bots, on the other hand, like to think for a few seconds and then provide a bunch of quasi-useful information about the company when all I want is a link. Some didn’t even link to amazon.com.

I don’t hate the additional information so much as I hate how long these AI tools take to get me what I need. Waiting 10 seconds for three paragraphs of generated text about Home Depot is not the answer; I just want a link to Home Depot. Google wins that race every time.

The next most popular kind of search is the information query: you want to know something specific, about which there is a single right answer. “NFL scores” is a hugely popular information query; “what time is it” is another one; so is “weather.” It doesn’t matter who tells you the score or the time or the temperature, it’s just a thing you need to know.

Perplexity’s answer seems helpful — but this wasn’t last night’s game. Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge

Here, the results are all over the map. For real-time stuff like sports scores, the AI is not to be trusted: You.com and Perplexity both frequently gave me outdated information, though Copilot usually got it right. Google not only gets it right but usually pops up a widget with other stats and information, which is better than the others. Ditto anything requiring your specific location or context — Google probably has that information about you, but the AI bots mostly don’t.

When it comes to more evergreen information like “how many weeks in a year” or “when is mother’s day,” everything I tested got it right. In many cases I actually preferred the AI answers, which add a bit of helpful context. But I’m not sure how often I can trust them. Google told me there are 52.1429 weeks in a year, but You.com explained that actually it’s 52 weeks and a day, plus an added day on leap years. That’s more useful than just 52.1429! But then Perplexity told me that actually, a common year is 52 weeks, and a leap year is 52 weeks and a day — before directly contradicting itself two sentences later. Here’s the whole answer; just try to make sense of it:

A common year has approximately 52 weeks, while a leap year has 52 weeks and 1 day. In more precise terms, a regular year actually consists of 52.143 weeks, which means there is one additional day in a normal year. On the other hand, a leap year, occurring every four years except for certain exceptions, has 52 weeks and 2 days. This difference in the number of weeks is due to the extra day in a common year and the additional day in February during a leap year.

After doing some more research, I am now confident that the answer is what You.com said. But this all took too long, and forcing me to fact-check my searches kind of defeats the purpose of helpfully summarizing things for me. Google continues to win here on one thing and one thing alone: speed.

There is one sub-genre of information queries in which the exact opposite is true, though. I call them Buried Information Queries. The best example I can offer is the very popular query, “how to screenshot on mac.” There are a million pages on the internet that contain the answer — it’s just Cmd-Shift-3 to take the whole screen or Cmd-Shift-4 to capture a selection, there, you’re welcome — but that information is usually buried under a lot of ads and SEO crap. All the AI tools I tried, including Google’s own Search Generative Experience, just snatch that information out and give it to you directly. This is great!

Now that is how you answer a question online. Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge

Are there complicated questions inherent in that, which threaten the business model and structure of the web? Yep! But as a pure searching experience, it’s vastly better. I’ve had similar results asking about ingredient substitutions, coffee ratios, headphone waterproofing ratings, and any other information that is easy to know and yet often too hard to find.

This brings me to the third kind of Google search: the exploration query. These are questions that don’t have a single answer, that are instead the beginning of a learning process. On the most popular list, things like “how to tie a tie,” “why were chainsaws invented,” and “what is tiktok” count as explorational queries. If you ever Googled the name of a musician you just heard about, or have looked up things like “stuff to do in Helena Montana” or “NASA history,” you’re exploring. These are not, according to the rankings, the primary things people use Google for. But these are the moments AI search engines can shine.

Like, wait: why were chainsaws invented? Copilot gave me a multipart answer about their medical origins, before describing their technological evolution and eventual adoption by lumberjacks. It also gave me eight pretty useful links to read more. Perplexity gave me a much shorter answer, but also included a few cool images of old chainsaws and a link to a YouTube explainer on the subject. Google’s results included a lot of the same links, but did none of the synthesizing for me. Even its generative search only gave me the very basics.

My favorite thing about the AI engines is the citations. Perplexity, You.com, and others are slowly getting better at linking to their sources, often inline, which means that if I come across a particular fact that piques my interest, I can go straight to the source from there. They don’t always offer enough sources, or put them in the right places, but this is a good and helpful trend.

One experience I had while doing these tests was actually the most eye-opening of all. The single most-searched question on Google is a simple one: “what to watch.” Google has a whole specific page design for this, with rows of posters featuring “Top picks” like Dune: Part Two and Imaginary; “For you” which for me included Deadpool and Halt and Catch Fire; and then popular titles and genre-sorted options. None of the AI search engines did as well: Copilot listed five popular movies; Perplexity offered a random-seeming smattering of options from Girls5eva to Manhunt to Shogun; You.com gave me a bunch of out of date information and recommended I watch “the 14 best Netflix original movies” without telling me what they are.

AI is the right idea but a chatbot is the wrong interface

In this case, AI is the right idea — I don’t want a bunch of links, I want an answer to my question — but a chatbot is the wrong interface. For that matter, so is a page of search results! Google, obviously aware that this is the most-asked question on the platform, has been able to design something that works much better.

In a way, that’s a perfect summary of the state of things. At least for some web searches, generative AI could be a better tool than the search tech of decades past. But modern search engines aren’t just pages of links. They’re more like miniature operating systems. They can answer questions directly, they have calculators and converters and flight pickers and all kinds of other tools built right in, they can get you where you’re going with just a click or two. The goal of most search queries, according to these charts, is not to start a journey of information wonder and discovery. The goal is to get a link or an answer, and then get out. Right now, these LLM-based systems are just too slow to compete.

The big question, I think, is less about tech and more about product. Everyone, including Google, believes that AI can help search engines understand questions and process information better. That’s a given in the industry at this point. But can Google reinvent its results pages, its business model, and the way it presents and summarizes and surfaces information, faster than the AI companies can turn their chatbots into more complex, more multifaceted tools? Ten blue links isn’t the answer for search, but neither is an all-purpose text box. Search is everything, and everything is search. It’s going to take a lot more than a chatbot to kill Google.

 

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1/11
@kimmonismus
Google is finished. @perplexity_ai will continue to prevail. Google has failed on the one hand with its countless ads in the search results and on the other hand by oversleeping AI search.

[Quoted tweet]
Wow what a difference between @perplexity_ai and google

2/11
@Emily_Escapor
Google search is free; your judgment is incorrect, so you must compare the two free versions against each other.



3/11
@kimmonismus
Perplexity is free aswell. Also: 5 pro searches á 4 hours



4/11
@BruvTrader888
Do you know how big Google is and what kind of talent it has? I mean.. "google is finished" is a very clikbaity post



5/11
@kimmonismus
No, I disagree. If you look at the ad search market, google will lose 50% of the market share for the first time in 2025. Google is in a losing position in search.



6/11
@netconstructor
Exactly - Google used to be all about delivering the best search experience, but now it feels like every click is a PPC ad or SEO trap. Remember when search results were clean, and ads were just on the side? They’ve shifted from innovating to maximizing shareholder profits. A perfect example of how losing focus on value can change a platform entirely.

7/11
@TSieranski
And Gemini is heavily censored when used in chat mode, which is what the average user utilizes. There's no way to disable the safety filters, which are set in some extremely peculiar manner, except through API and AI Studio (you can disable them there). If you ask about translating some swearings, you won't get a response at all. @GeminiApp



8/11
@AphanFX
Anyone that starts down the path of using Perplexity, OAI, and Claude, will start to find themselves rarely using Google. After using google for over 25 years, becoming a master / expert user including mastering google hacking, I find myself using it maybe once or twice a day, and that is to find specific websites, not to search for information.



9/11
@rezmeram
And who lead AI self sabotage, might be a Nobel Prize winning AI doomer



10/11
@luischarles0
Google has ads in search results because that’s how they generate most of their revenue, nothing wrong with that



11/11
@Hello_World
It's very rare that better UI wins over better distribution, even in the long run.

Slack seemed to win yet here we are and Microsoft Teams is eating them for breakfast.

The google result is not accurate either, often you will get a summary in the top which is what most need.




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1/11
@danwolch
Wow what a difference between @perplexity_ai and google

2/11
@danwolch
Wow. Just amazing

3/11
@SriSpree
Perplexity is just amazing..

It's paragraph framing and linking sources.. truly incredible!



4/11
@danwolch
When it works.....it really works.



5/11
@rodolforeis
Is it worth shift from ChatGPT Pro to Perplexity Pro?



6/11
@danwolch
I pay for both. I use ChatGPT for coding



7/11
@davecraige
great query



8/11
@danwolch
It's funny I remembered the quote from X somewhere, but couldn't remember where I found it. I tried googling it but the results were horrible. Then I @perplexity_ai 'd it and thought "yikes google".



9/11
@michaeltastad
Perplexity isn’t a search engine. It is an answers engine.



10/11
@findmyke
Google's in a very difficult position.

If they improve the search results for users, they negatively impact customers, revenue goes down.



11/11
@John_Bailey
FYI @shiringhaffary




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1/12
@kimmonismus
An answer to why Google is finished.

Google continues to dominate in the area of search resulting ad revenues. However, Google is increasingly under pressure and there is no sign of this changing. My thesis: Google will die a slow death. I'll explain why and back it up with empirical data.

1) Google is increasingly losing out on the search market. Even now, when gen AI has not yet established itself in the search sector, Google is already losing share and revenue. Ad revenue is still Google's most important business and most important source of income. https://www.wsj.com/tech/online-ad-market-google-tiktok-9599d7e8
"According to data from GS Statcounter, Google's search engine market share appears to have fallen to 86.99%, the lowest point since the firm began tracking search engine share in 2009.
The drop represents a more than 4% decrease from the previous month, marking the largest single-month decline on record." Google's Search Engine Market Share Drops As Competitors' Grows [UPDATE]
There is also a trend that searches are no longer generated via links and revenue share, but via generative AI. Perplexity and ChatGPT rely on their own crawlers, which on the one hand store the information and return it on request, but even more so on direct partnerships, so that the websistes are no longer controlled at all. Moreover, it is not clear why the traditional search via different links should experience a revival. On the contrary: it can be assumed that searches and answers will increasingly be issued via AI searches such as those mentioned. As soon as agents are added, this damage will be exacerbated insofar as the agents do everything autonomously for the person. A search is often not necessary; the agent takes care of everything for you.
Although Perplexity is also trying to rely on advertising in the end, the main revenue will continue to be the subscription, as with OpenAI. This is fundamentally opposed to free Google search. Google has tried to establish its own variant with Gemini, but this undermines its own monopoly.

2) In the cloud business, Google is clearly lagging behind the competition. At 28%, they are not lagging behind, but are clearly in the runner-up position compared to AWS and Azure. To date, there has been no sign of an investment that would put pressure on the competition. On the contrary: the cloud market is growing, but faster than Google is gaining shares. Alphabet Ergebnisse: Wachstum der Werbeeinnahmen enttäuscht

3) GenAI. Google is known to have its own LLM in the form of Gemini. But here, too, the product is at odds with its own approach. Gemini should act as the first point of contact for any questions. This in turn puts pressure on ad revenue. One reason why Google tried for so long not to integrate Gemini into the search. However, the first real attempts were also known to have failed miserably. Meta's own model, on the other hand, does not rely on the usual approach: free and open source. That's what Meta does. You could say that Meta in GenAI is the new Google. Because Google's dominance in various areas stems from the fact that it is free and open source (Chromium, Android). Gemini, on the other hand, is the opposite and has therefore aroused less interest and appeal in the community than Llama. Even though Google (i.e. Alphabet) is sitting on masses of excellent TPUs, it doesn't seem as if the compute is being put to good use. In addition, the company's CEO always wavers between consumer products and real future-oriented products. Not least because of this, there were also recent disputes with DeepMind, which was told to focus more on consumer products. Or to put it another way: Sundar Pichai deliberately overslept the trend towards GenAI because there was no solution to keep his own business alive. Pichai's hesitancy then leads to absurd scenes like at the Google i/o, where they try to be "cool" and "funny" to appeal to the consumer, while at the same time trying to come across as serious for the developers. All the imaginative products they used to have are now taken over by Meta - and even produced.

4) YouTube and co. YouTube is now an important source of income for Google. However, the prices are now so high (subscription) that many are already turning away and looking for alternatives. Google can't drive the price much higher. What's more, GenAI videos are also creating competition here. TikTok and Meta are in the starting blocks and will soon create their own platforms where educational videos are created using AI. In short, the future of YouTube does not look good.

All in all, Google has come to a standstill in 2010. It is trying to survive using traditional methods. And so far it has worked to some extent. But: the sinking ship is in sight. The decline is clearly visible and so far there is no valid solution in sight from C-Level.

[Quoted tweet]
Google is finished. @perplexity_ai will continue to prevail. Google has failed on the one hand with its countless ads in the search results and on the other hand by oversleeping AI search.

2/12
@kimmonismus
Don't forget that Google search accounts for ~60% of total revenue! It is by far the most important source of revenue for Google.

3/12
@Prashant_1722
One reason Amazon is rising because of ecommerce ecosystem they built and it is easier to advertise to users right when they are looking for products on the ecommerce platform because the intent is already there. This is better than spending money on Google search and hoping people land there. Amazon also benefits from small and medium advertisers spending money to promote their products. They are not only dependent on big brands.

However, people will still spend money on Google advertising because of the sheer volume of users who search everyday.



4/12
@kimmonismus
I'm not saying that Google is already dead. But the figures show a trend. And that's what I'm focusing on. Google has an annual turnover of $~300b. The search sector is by far the largest source of revenue, and that is collapsing.



5/12
@modelsarereal
AI is not a search robot; AI is used when you want to talk about something with someone who understands the subject. But as soon as it comes to reliable original data, humans and AI are out of the game.



6/12
@kimmonismus
wrong. Thats why RAG and even more Open AI's o1 show, that with proper system-2 elements we can reduce hallucinations to >4%. And I am pretty sure that in 2025 we will lower it to >0,1%



7/12
@reymondin
And as if that wasn’t enough, US government is considering a breakup of Google.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/09/tech/us-government-considers-a-breakup-of-google/index.html



8/12
@kimmonismus
That would be the next hard blow.



9/12
@ASM65617010
Partially disagree. The future of some major corporations is closely tied to their strength in cutting-edge research, and Google possesses a large pool of talent in this area.

This week, two current and one former Google researchers were awarded Nobel Prizes.



10/12
@kimmonismus
I deliberately exclude DeepMind from my criticism. However, DeepMind and Pichai are often not on the same page. The wrong priorities are set at CEO level, which often slow DeepMind down.
DeepMind would be better off without Google.
To put it bluntly: Demis Hassabis and his team are doing an excellent job!



11/12
@eckhardt_d48141
I wonder when we will see a YT Killer from X. The step toward a real X Video Platform is rather easy to take. More and more content producer flock to X since Elon is in Charge.



12/12
@kimmonismus
True! Excited as well




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[Serious]

Ai searches as they currently stand, are garbage.

I find myself going out my way to look even closer to ensure a webpage is a primary source.

 

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Sundar Pichai says Google Search will ‘change profoundly’ in 2025

Pichai took a jab at Microsoft.

www.theverge.com

Sundar Pichai says Google Search will ‘change profoundly’ in 2025​

He also welcomed any side-by-side comparison to Microsoft’s AI tech, saying ‘they’re using someone else’s models.’​

By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
Dec 5, 2024, 4:01 PM EST

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge
Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the company’s search engine will “change profoundly” in 2025. “I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before,” Pichai said during the NYT’s DealBook Summit on Wednesday.
“I think you’ll be surprised, even early in ‘25, the kind of newer things Search can do compared to where it is today.”

Related​

• Google is redesigning its search engine — and it’s AI all the way down
• From ChatGPT to Gemini: how AI is rewriting the internet

Pichai also responded to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comment from earlier this year, in which he said Google should’ve been the “default winner” in the AI race. “I would love to do a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft’s own models and our models,” Pichai said. He added that Microsoft is “using someone else’s models,” alluding to the company’s partnership with OpenAI.
“When I look at what’s coming ahead, we are in the earliest stages of a profound shift,” Pichai said. “I just think there’s so much innovation ahead. We are committed to being at the state of the art in this field, and I think we are.”
Google started its big AI overhaul of Search this year, which included the addition of AI search summaries and a Lens update that lets you search the web with a video. The company is also preparing to launch a major update to its Gemini model as it aims to compete with Microsoft, OpenAI, and the AI search engine Perplexity.

 

[ChatGPT-5]

isn't google using A.I now? and just keeping the same interface. chatgpt gives you web searches and links. they are both the same. i just like how chatgpt can summarize a link.

folks like "google is still better" google a.i :