Is it me, or have Google search results become rubbish? Look up “how come Google sucks now?” and Google itself seems to have its doubts. At the top of the page, there’s a new AI summary from Google Gemini: it might be to do with spam, or bots, or that horrible phrase, search engine optimisation, it helpfully suggests. It might be the “fast-changing nature of the internet”. It might be the trillion-dollar company’s own priorities. “Some say that Google cares more about self-preservation and profit than searcher satisfaction,” it ventures.
In any other domain, such customer dissatisfaction would quickly affect a company’s bottom line. If everyone suddenly noticed that, say, M&S underwear was full of spiders, or Ford Focuses no longer had enough wheels, they would take their business elsewhere. But when Google showers us with annoying adverts, or misdirects us to the wrong hotel, or tells us that glue is an essential ingredient in pizza (as Gemini famously did when it launched), most of us don’t know where to turn. There are other search engines: but Google is so central to mine and others’ experience of the internet they do not feel like meaningful alternatives. I wrote this article on a Google Doc, on my Google Chrome browser, and sent it off via Gmail.
But there are signs the tables are turning. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is facing unprecedented challenges to its dominance: in the shape of antitrust lawsuits, new competition from AI rivals, and ambient dissatisfaction. Those who have long held that it’s unhealthy for one company to have so much unaccountable power are beginning to imagine what a post-Google world might look like.
Panicky missteps
Last month, a US district court ruled that Google had, indeed, established and maintained an illegal monopoly on internet advertising (for which the search engine is really just a fancy front).“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” concluded Judge Amit Meht. The more baroque revelations from the trial included one where Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to remain the default search engine on the iPhone. Considering Google designed the Android operating system too, that means any time anyone looks anything up on their phone, Google has the chance to make money.
There are many similar cases. Last month, Alphabet lost an appeal to overturn a €2.4 billion antitrust penalty imposed by the EU. And then there are the technological challenges. With companies such as Open AI and Nvidia attracting all the hype, Google has made some panicky missteps. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Google has begun to make some strange and urgent decisions now that there has begun to be competition in the artificial intelligence space,” says Matt Pearce, an L.A.-based journalist who has covered Google’s antitrust trials. “You can see that when the company has to compete, it’s just not something it’s used to.”
Even Google’s defenders feel the company has work to do. “They’re losing their innovative sparkle,” says Professor Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? “Google is becoming better known for killing products than starting them. They’ve lost their consumer market focus.” Still, he argues the decline in search quality isn’t all Google’s fault. It’s ours. “The web is broken. It’s been filled with spam and crap – at an accelerated rate, thanks to AI. And we’re blaming Google!” He feels that, in future, Google will have to becomemore selective about what it chooses to show you. “But that’s complex and controversial and we’ll have to see how Google react to that.”
Kathryn Parsons, a British tech entrepreneur in San Francisco, feels that Google is simply showing its age.“The fact is, Google is a mature company and with that maturity comes problems,” she says. “The ability to remain innovative is just one of them.” That being said, Google remains way ahead on AI, and always has been.“Alphabet is positioned amongst only a small handful of companies in the world to capitalize upon the AI wave,” Parsons says. “Their access to data, talent and computing power puts them at an incredible competitive advantage.”
Hotel California
With AI come further opportunities for the company to assert its monopoly. You might notice the Google homepage is no longer a series of blue links, directing you to other parts of the internet. It’s now a series of AI-generated summaries, cobbled from other sites and served up in a format of Google’s choosing. It means Google increasingly resembles the Hotel California: you can check in any time you like, but you might find it hard to leave.
“All of these companies now want you to stay on their sites,” says Pearce. “They want to be like hotels where you stay and spend lots of money, rather than a train station that you pass through on your way somewhere else.” So dominant is Google, it’s hard to know how to challenge it. The fact that it pays Apple $20bn a yearnotto create a rival search engine gives some idea of the costs involved in even mounting a challenge. In terms of engaging the public? That’s hard too. “Google in every possible way has won the war,” says Pearce. “The whole journalism industry is now a subsidiary of Google. It’s no longer independent in any meaningful way.”
Even if Google is broken up, we have no guarantee what comes next will be any better... It might be Bing.
Airing dirty laundry
Even if the antitrust cases do result in Google being broken up, or sanctioned, or regulated, we have no guarantee that what comes next would be better. It might be much worse. It might be Bing. “Maybe this is the internet that we’re stuck with,” says Pearce. “Maybe these cases will fall apart” and Google will “just end up with a slap on the wrist”. But he still holds out hope that scrutiny will improve things. “Just having [Google’s] dirty laundry aired and politicians haul them through testimony… at some point, you have to believe that it has an effect,” he says. The monopolies of old, like Standard Oil, also looked invincible. Until they didn’t.
