Google's Grip on Search Slips as TikTok and AI Startup Mount Challenge (yahoo.com) 29
Google's grip on the nearly $300 billion search advertising business is loosening. From a report: For years, the tech giant has seemed invincible in this corner of the ad market, which is the foundation of its business. Now, rivals are beginning to eat into its lead, and new offerings -- fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence and social video -- threaten to reshape the landscape. TikTok, the wildly popular short-form video platform, has recently started allowing brands to target ads based on users' search queries -- a direct challenge to Google's core business.
Perplexity, an AI search startup backed by Jeff Bezos, plans to introduce ads later this month under its AI-generated answers. Until now, it has made revenue mostly from a $20-a-month subscription offering that grants access to more-powerful AI technology. The new initiatives add to the pressure on Google from the rise of Amazon.com, which has taken a chunk of search ad spending. Many consumers begin product searches on the e-commerce platform.
Google's share of the U.S. search ad market is expected to drop below 50% next year for the first time in over a decade, according to the research firm eMarketer. Amazon is expected to have 22.3% of the market this year, with 17.6% growth, compared with Google's 50.5% share and its 7.6% growth.
Perplexity, an AI search startup backed by Jeff Bezos, plans to introduce ads later this month under its AI-generated answers. Until now, it has made revenue mostly from a $20-a-month subscription offering that grants access to more-powerful AI technology. The new initiatives add to the pressure on Google from the rise of Amazon.com, which has taken a chunk of search ad spending. Many consumers begin product searches on the e-commerce platform.
Google's share of the U.S. search ad market is expected to drop below 50% next year for the first time in over a decade, according to the research firm eMarketer. Amazon is expected to have 22.3% of the market this year, with 17.6% growth, compared with Google's 50.5% share and its 7.6% growth.
Bing is better too (Score:2)
Re:Bing is better too (Score:4, Interesting)
If you use Bing with Cortana, it can often find things better than Google. Partially because Google sold out to the SEO crowd.
Google sold out to the SEO crowd? Google created the SEO crowd, promoted the SEO ideology every step of the way, and is now an SEO evangelist, ranking in tech territory about where Jimmy Swaggart ranked for TV evangelists at one time. Right around the time he got busted doing naked chinese firedrills with hookers.
Re: Bing is better too (Score:2)
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I know exactly what he just said, and it was awesome.
Depending on your age, you might not have been around when Jimmy Swaggart was a thing, doing his scandal-ridden pop media televangelism "religion", but you can imagine what it was like. Comparing it to Google SEO web-evangelism is a great analogy.
Although, you can't blame a guy for "doing naked chinese firedrills with hookers". I wonder what they are doing now in the Google c-suite?
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Depending on your age, you might not have been around when Jimmy Swaggart was a thing, doing his scandal-ridden pop media televangelism "religion", but you can imagine what it was like
He survived Apollo 13. He's a national hero. Show some damn respect!
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Partially because Google sold out to the SEO crowd.
That's like saying Microsoft sold out to malware distributors. No Google and the SEO crowd have always been at odds with each other. They play an endless game of whack-a-mole with the SEO crowd gaming Google's algorithm with rubbish while Google tries in vain to block the tricks without actually breaking the search engine (which isn't as easy as it sounds).
The only reason the SEO crowd doesn't do the same thing with Bing is because "With our services you can optimise your engagement with 3.9% of your potent
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I'd pay maybe $10/month for a Google subscription that gave me no ads for anything.
For that matter, I'd pay $50/month for an internet subscription that gave me no ads for anything, on any site I looked at.
Most of us already pay $50 a month for internet, with ads. I'd toss another twenty-five at ad-free, for sure. Maybe more, depending on particularly how annoyed I am at ads at the time I sign up.
SEO vs real good info (Score:2)
AI is getting relevant, cause it gets (mostly) good answers to questions, compared to Google, where answers are getting more and more sponsored, and less relevant.
As for TikTok, AKA the PRC, I can't say, I will never let that shit in my home on smartphone. Just as Temu.
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Back in the days, Google would just find relevant stuff crawling the web, in these days where SEO wasn't a thing
SEO has been around longer than Google. SEO has been around almost as long as there have been search engines to manipulate, and there were plenty of search engines before Google. The first recorded use of the term "Search Engine Optimisation" was in 1997, although it was likely in use well before that, and the techniques were in use before they had a name. Google wasn't founded until 1998.
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Providing Answers vs Web Search (Score:3)
If you need a question answered, Google is pretty good at that.
If you need to search the web, unfortunately Google hasn't done a good job at that in over a decade.
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I asked yesterday, for no reason, "why do my clothes smell like a wet dog?"
It gave good, accurate answers with suggestions - use less detergent; clean the washing machine; wash dogs manually, not in washing machine.
Etc, ymmv.
Since this just works now, why do we need to pour billions of dollars into it? I'm good with it being able to answer questions like these.
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AI Can Offer Better Search but Also Altern. to Ads (Score:2)
AI that can search, cite, and link while integrating information by relevance to the query is obviously vastly superior to Google search.
Similarly, however, AI that gets to know the user and his/her needs/interests and projects could be a bastion for business IF the AI company charges to list their products. The key to win would be to offer more information about the products thereby enabling the AI to determine what products meet the user's actual needs.
When I say products here, it also applies to service
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Around the early 2000's or so my buddy has a similar idea. I was coding professionally at the time, but I only knew about NLP, not a whole lot about it.
The idea of a virtual librarian/atlas/digital butler? wasn't entirely new, as it existed aplenty in fiction.
At the time, chatbots were no better than "let me google that for you". Siri, Alexa, etc were released not too long after, and they were more novelty than anything. The NLP on the front end was good enough, but the actions were never all that impressiv
Time for Google to start finding new markets? (Score:2)
Ages ago, IBM was in the cash register market, and had to find new markets to keep going, thus being one of the first companies into the computer ecosystem. Maybe Google needs to start moving into other markets? The ad market isn't going to keep expanding, and it is only a matter of time, either due to nationalism, worry about intel gathering, increased concern about privacy, and people just sick and tired of ad companies, that the market is going to shrink, especially because the ad market likely will im
Re: Time for Google to start finding new markets? (Score:2)
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The AI startup mentioned in the headline was for some reason left out of the summary. FYI, it's Perplexity. It's RAG**. It's pretty good (not perfect, but pretty good).
** You post your query, it pulls up 8 or so diverse search results, and uses the info from them plus its own knowledge to answer your question.
Getting a Grip on Marketing write offs. (Score:2)
Google's grip on the nearly $300 billion search advertising business..
A search advertising business that was reduced to half a dozen results on the first page only, because society embraced ADHD as some kind of personal mantra.
Ask any company with second-page search results if they think that’s worth $300 billion.
OH NO! (Score:2)
Anyway
The value of AI search is in combatting AI spam (Score:2)
Regular searching has become such garbage these days. Ten years ago, I could look up a fact and be sure to find it in the first few results. Now, there are 1000 spam sites for every real site, and the number of spam sites keeps growing thanks to better and better (or worse and worse) AI tools.
Now we need AI to sort through the AI spam. The overall result is worse than what we used to get, thanks to hallucinations and the AI slurping up the good with the bad. Eventually, we're going to all buy copies of
Search has become commodity (Score:2)
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Google used to be great (Score:2)