Google is Fading?  I Don’t Think So!

Oh, the AI hypesters, all of them so eager to push their new Agentic AI, Chatbots, AI apps, and new unproven AI-augmented services and infrastructure.  And they’re lashing out with a lot of rhetoric about Google being a digital Dinosaur.

The attack on Google search and AI tells us that Google still leads and is most significant resource for small businesses anywhere on earth, whether its professional services, travel or real estate. It’s a technology, a source, and a reliable partner. When companies give up on Google-sourced reach and leads, they could be sounding the company’s death knell. If you’re on that journey away from Google, you may want to review the picture.

For small to mid-sized companies, Google is essential to your business future. Google’s not going away, and is repositioning for a new period of success (post AI hype).  It’s new services, technology and tools help you capitalize on its ecosphere. And it’s Google search engine provides free reach, prestige and leads. Hard to beat that deal! And it’s unwise to give up on SEO.

The ChatGPT/Agentic AI Hype: Exclude the Market Leader?

It’s a competitive ploy of course, this disparaging narrative against Google. Yet it has resulted in user churn and brand damage for Google. The danger in small business owners being all caught up in the hype, is that if you neglect Google as your solid, respectable and profit-producing partner for essentially unknown, fly-by-nighters, you’re jeopardizing your company. Turning business over to them en masse welcomes small business disaster at scale. And turning away from Google’s incredible value proposition within its ecosystem is unwise. It’s the place to be in this expansionary period ahead.

Your marketing strategy should be Google-focused and optimized, and then it’ll be optimized for everything else.

Don’t Underestimate Google’s Adaptability

Competitive pressure is good, as the company will have to review its personnel including the CEO/President.

Google is an established, well-financed and consistently innovative company and it can adapt to the new challengers. The company may need change at the top though, since the US economy has changed and the competition has targeted Google’s weaknesses and is feeding on them. Google’s reluctance to respond, dominate and leverage AI has come back to haunt the company. This was a failure of leadership. A new review of the CEO and other senior executives will help identify what the key organizational problem actually is. Understanding the company’s vulnerability is the key to keeping their market leader position. The India-first service priority too is a warning of being out of date. AI is replacing cheap Indian coders and CRM.

Google Gemini AI LLM GPT search is fantastic, because its output is much more human-understandable and comfortable. I prefer Google Gemini by far and find myself not using ChatGPT anymore.  Google’s reluctance to give it access to real time databases is disturbing however, and given Microsoft Copilot and Grok are real-time, you can see Google’s senior management need a performance evaluation.  It’s at the top where its needed most.

PC Mag Review: “It works well as a standalone AI chatbot, but Gemini’s true value comes from its bundled cloud storage and deep integration with nearly every Google app.”  The apps include Chrome, Google Travel, Gmail, and Google’s office productivity workspace.

AI Mode Overviews are just two of the customer-facing services that show Google is still number one in search and brand respect. Users love Google for all it gives them. The versatility and connectedness that AI is promising is already delivered by Google. All competitors can do is cry “monopoly.”

With respect to AI search, the userbase erosion over to ChatGPT is small at this point, even smaller to Microsoft CoPilot.  Many users like myself have learned that Google Gemini is better than expected – it speaks in terms people can understand. Deep research is excellent, and they’ll no doubt improve it. AI Mode too brings the hybrid search together for a more worthwhile experience. While OpenAI might offer more open-source opportunities, Google’s search-to-ecommerce ecosphere is powerful with an unmatched audience of consumers and B2B buyers.

Within all the hype, Google’s ecosphere and incredible reach and extensive consumer tools are left out.  As you’ll read below, its wealth of resources means Google AI is more useful in real life, not just academic.

As of March 2025, with 5.56 billion internet users, and Google’s market share being around 90.14%, it’s estimated that approximately 4.9 billion people use Google search — Exploding Topics

Consider Re-Upgrading to Google

If you’ve been persuaded by the overly hopeful hypesters to downgrade Google, you should review that stance. Google can connect your business to billions of people worldwide – they’re still serving trillions of searches and have a massive loyal customer base. Consider too, that the company could lower its prices in strategic areas of business and land a big blow to competitors such as OpenAI.  I would suggest to Google’s CEO that they should do this.

OpenAI has the reputation of being better able to serve the AI business economy and tech-sphere. But in reality, users are just attracted to shiny new buttons.  Google can deliver some tarnish, and probably should be working on doing so.

Companies that disparage and neglect Google’s ecosphere will suffer a shock when the company turns it on. The scare from the competition will ensure Google upgrades its leadership, tech and business strategy. This company has so much talent, intelligence and capability, it’s not going to come in 2^nd.   It’s going to win.

Let’s take a look at some reasoning that shows why Google will always be relevant:

Google is not Passe

It’s true that the search marketplace is undergoing a significant transformation due to generative AI. Commentators who suggest Google is “passe” often point to a few key changes:

• AI Overviews and “Zero-Click Searches”: Google’s introduction of AI Overviews, which summarize answers directly in search results, can lead to fewer clicks on traditional web links. This raises concerns about traffic to publishers and potential impacts on Google’s ad revenue, especially for high-value commercial queries. Some studies even suggest a slight decrease in AI Overviews holding the top spot for certain queries, particularly transactional ones, indicating that user behavior still plays a role in their placement. AI Overviews however is the ideal spot for Google to present anything it wants, distributing users to a useful Google product.
• Rise of AI Chatbots: AI chatbots like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Copilot means users are increasingly finding answers outside of traditional search engine interfaces. This could lead to a reduction in direct Google usage for certain types of queries.
• Direct Information vs. Links: A shift from a “list of links” to direct answers from AI changes how users interact with information, potentially impacting Google’s long-standing ad-supported model. However, Google overviews/AI mode presents users with desired lists of links which give searches a context for them to learn on their own.  User’s (e.g., travel shoppers) want to shop with a  context, not be railroaded into a narrow set of options.

Calling Google a “dinosaur” Lacks Credibility

• Dominant Market Share: Search is still how people find products such as homes for sale, flights, hotels, and trips/tours. Google is keeping is dominant share of the search market (around 80%). While rivals are gaining a little traffic, they are still far behind.
• Adaptation of Search Itself: Google is actively integrating AI into its core search experience. Features like “AI Mode” and “Deep Search” are designed to handle more complex, multimodal queries and provide more comprehensive answers, keeping users within the Google ecosystem. They’re seeing increased search usage from users who engage with AI Overviews.
• Monetization of AI: Google is exploring new monetization strategies, including paid AI subscriptions (Google AI Pro and Ultra) and embedding ads into free AI services like AI Overviews and Gemini. This suggests they are actively working to adapt their revenue models. Google could become more creative (with a new CEO) and boldly finding new ways to reconnect with former users – they brought me back with Gemini deep search.

Google’s C-Suite has been Slow in some Sspects of AI Realm, showing Poor Vision

This is a common criticism, especially given the rapid emergence of competitors like OpenAI. There’s a perception that Google, despite its deep AI research roots (DeepMind, Google Brain), was initially caught off guard by the public’s embrace of generative AI chatbots (shiny new buttons).

• Perception of Lag: While Google has been a pioneer in AI research for years (e.g., TensorFlow, Transformer architecture), their public-facing generative AI products were paired with old product names which made their innovative products seem outdated to ChatGPT.
• Leadership Challenges: Google relinquished the AI space to OpenAI, which gained market leader advantage, and enjoyed a big push by tech hypesters and others whose businesses have lagged. Google management had other outdated priorities which may continue to plague their opportunity in AI. Additionally, they may be being outflanked by competitors with a narrower scope of business and financing needs.  Google seems to be losing fans and brand ambassadors to the OpenAI hype promise on specific products/segments.

Google’s AI Leadership is Still Strong in Many Areas

• Vertical Integration: Google’s AI strategy is deeply integrated, controlling hardware (TPUs), cloud infrastructure (Google Cloud Platform), model development (Gemini, PaLM, AlphaFold), and vast user data. This vertical integration allows for immense scale, performance, and real-time refinement of their AI systems.
• Investment in Research and Development: Google continues to invest heavily in cutting-edge AI research through DeepMind, Google Brain, and Google Research. They are pushing the boundaries of multimodal models, world models, and embodied AI (e.g., Gemini Robotics).
• Focus on Responsible AI: Google has publicly committed to AI principles emphasizing responsible development and deployment, with governance processes to address safety, privacy, and security risks.
• Ecosystem Advantage: Google’s AI tools are woven into its entire ecosystem, from Google Cloud and Workspace to Ads, YouTube, and Android. This allows for cross-platform synergy and a significant advantage in data collection and application.

Google can Adapt like no other Company to Capture the AI-assisted and Agentic AI Era

Google possesses several inherent strengths that position it well for the AI-assisted and Agentic AI era:

• Massive Data Trove: Google’s unparalleled access to vast amounts of first-person data (from Search, Gmail, Maps, Android, YouTube, etc.) gives it a significant advantage in training and fine-tuning AI models. This “feedback dominance” allows for rapid adaptation and improvement.
• Deep AI Expertise and Talent: Google has a long history of attracting and retaining top AI researchers and engineers. This deep talent pool is crucial for developing and implementing cutting-edge AI.
• Infrastructure and Scalability: Google’s robust cloud infrastructure and custom-built AI chips (TPUs) provide the necessary foundation to train and deploy large-scale AI models efficiently. They are continually upgrading this infrastructure.
• Agentic AI Initiatives: Google is actively developing and deploying agentic AI. Their work on “AI Mode” in Search, Project Mariner (automating web tasks), Inbox Cleanup, and Agentic Shopping are early examples of AI moving from passive assistants to proactive, goal-driven agents. They are also developing tools like Vertex AI Agent Engine and Agent Development Kit to enable others to build custom AI agents which tap into their marketplaces and ecommerce functionality.
• Adaptability in Core Products: The integration of Gemini into core products like Gmail and Google Docs, and the evolution of search into a more conversational and action-oriented experience, demonstrates their ability to adapt existing services.

Good Advice: Never Leave Planet Google’s Orbit

For digital marketers, Google search offers the best free reach to consumers, your current customers, influencers, and is the largest source of visitors/leads and revenue. We need to respect its vast and instant reach to customers. You have to respect its reach to your current customers, allowing competitors to reach them and change their perspective. Consider how much of your churn actually happens via Google search.

The hype leans toward others, but if Google does a better job of promoting its value it might be able to tone down the perceived weakness vs Microsoft CoPilot and OpenAI ChatGPT.

Strong SEO strategy for Google search helps companies stay relevant and trusted for all AI LLMs and thus find themselves in the GPT driven search results. Being Google-powered does not preclude leveraging other marketplaces and platforms.  It’s just that Google should be your central source for marketing.

Find out more about Travel SEO, Hotel SEO, and creative content strategy and see how Google must remain the center of your marketing world.