Google may no longer be the ‘Godfather of search’ as AI tools gain ground

Tech giant Apple revealed last week that it is “actively looking at” incorporating AI-enhanced search technologies in its Safari web browser during testimony in the US Justice Department’s case against Alphabet—Google’s parent company.

Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, said the company faces growing pressure from regulators scrutinising its $20 billion deal with Google to remain the default search engine.

Cue said that for the first time in 22 years, Safari searches using Google declined due to the rising usage of AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Anthropic.

Pascal Bornet, AI and automation expert and influencer, said on LinkedIn: “I believe we are witnessing the digital trend of the decade… this isn't just a tech fight. It’s a signal: the way we discover information is about to change—fast.” 

Apple said it is responding to consumer behaviour changes as AI tools become preferred search alternatives, changing how people find information and reducing the reliance on traditional keyword searches. 

Since the announcement, Alphabet lost $150 billion in market value in one day after the news broke, with stock down 7.3%. Losing the deal with Apple could weaken Google’s dominance in search advertising.

According to Jaysen Gillespie, head of analytics and data science, RTB House, OpenAI is the one “holding the pen”, meaning that it is the platform leading the shift towards AI and users will likely move away from traditional search engines to AI tools. 

He said, “Apple sees the writing on the wall: AI tools are the future of search. From recent litigation, we know that Apple can make billions of dollars per year by making Google the default search engine. It’s smart business to weigh that future revenue stream against what they might generate from an owned and operated approach, perhaps more aligned with Apple culture. In addition, AI companies have focused on building a direct customer base, but the truth is that many tech companies yearn for a taste of those high-margin advertising dollars. From ‘we will never have ads Netflix’ to Amazon to Apple, we see big tech working hard to tap into the advertising ecosystem. With AI serving as a natural interactive answer machine, it seems highly likely that AI becomes a key source for search. Just as some people start searching on Amazon or TikTok versus traditional search engines, some will migrate to AI engines.”

However, while AI adoption for search has become more popular, a recent survey by digital marketing agency Higher Visibility showed it is being used as a complement to classic search and not a full replacement. While 71.5% of users reported using AI tools for search, 79.8% prefer Google or Microsoft Bing for general information searches.

Rüdiger Dalchow, global SEO strategy lead for Improove, said on LinkedIn that this move shows that big players, with Apple being one of the biggest, are recognising that Google will not be the “Godfather of search” in the future and SEO experts need to rethink their strategies based on that. 

He said: “For us as SEOs this means (no matter if we call it GEO, SEO, AI optimisation or whatever) we have to be prepared for AI search, understand the ways information is retrieved and evaluated by LLMs.”