Is AI Killing Google Search? It Might Be Doing the Opposite

The world's dominant search engine is so far adapting well to the AI age

- Asa Fitch

I upstarts were supposed to lay siege to Google's search-engine dominance. So far, the defense is winning.

Google's ubiquitous search tool has proven surprisingly resilient to competition from the likes of OpenAI, which is hoping people will skip the search box and ask its chatbot for answers instead.

One of Google's lines of defense has been its "AI Overview" tool, whereby users can see answers generated by its Gemini AI model hovering above their traditional search results. Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said Wednesday that this tool now has over 2 billion monthly users, up from 1.5 billion users in its last quarterly update. Google is also rolling out an "AI Mode" that competes more directly with chatbots.

"We see AI powering an expansion in how people are searching for and accessing information," Pichai said in a call with analysts, adding that AI features "cause users to search more as they learn that Search can meet more of their needs."

Independent analyses suggest Google's AI search strategy is indeed having an impact. Search impressions—the number of advertiser links that show up in searches, even if they aren't clicked—grew by 49% in the year since the overviews were launched, according to a May report from BrightEdge, a search-engine-optimization firm.