THE STATE OF GOOGLE:
Bing, the search engine that everyone knows about but no one uses. Or at least, that’s what
we all remember it as. Bing has actually been making quite a bit of progress against Google
especially in the desktop market. At the end of 2018, Google had a marketshare of 91.46% while
Bing had a marketshare of a mere 3.36%. But, by the end of 2022, Google’s marketshare had
fallen to 84.08% while Bing’s marketshare rose to 8.95%. In October, Bing’s marketshare almost even
crossed 10%, and looking at the trend, it appears that this will happen within the next couple of
months. Now of course, Google is still by far the most dominant player, but at the same time,
we can’t just write off this trend as random market fluctuations either given the massive
size of the desktop market. Over 5 billion people around the world have access to the internet,
and even if we assume only half of these people use computers to access the internet,
that’s 2.5 billion people. This means that Bing’s rise in market shares correlates to a rise from
84 million users to 224 million, also known as an extra 140 million users. It’s not just
market share numbers that are suggesting this either. Google themselves suggest that interest
around Google has fallen substantially from their peak back in 2014. In fact,
interest in Google is only about 50% of its peak which brings us back to 2011 levels. What makes
this even scarier for Google is that Yahoo was at this same level of interest just 10 years ago. So,
if Google follows a similar path to Yahoo, they may very well be at single digit numbers in 10
years, but that’s of course the worst case scenario. It’s quite unlikely that Google
will end up like Yahoo anytime soon. But it does look Google’s hayday was nearly 10 years ago at
this point. And looking at the trend, it appears that there’s just even more downside ahead. But,
wait a minute, Google’s while Google’s marketshare has been trending down, it has fallen anywhere
near 50%. So why are people ditching Google and where’s all this internet traffic going instead?
ALTERNATIVE SEARCH ENGINES: Well, starting off with the
most obvious culprit, we have competing search engines and particularly Bing. 10 to 15 years ago,
you could’ve made the argument that one search engine is better than another,
but nowadays, they all perform to a pretty high standard including Bing. So,
practicality is something that will rarely get people to switch between search engines given
that they’re all about the same. But, something that is a pretty good incentive is money.
If you’re not familiar with Microsoft’s Rewards program, Microsoft will literally pay you for
using Bing. This might seem odd at first, but it actually makes sense. Microsoft makes money
from showing you sponsored search results, and they simply share some of this revenue with you
as a thank you. For every search you make on Bing, you’ll earn 5 points, and as a newbie,
this is capped at 50 points per day or 10 searches. This is just for starters though,
if you actually use Bing regularly, Microsoft will boost your limit to 250 points per day or
50 searches. Each point roughly correlates to 1 cent, so you could easily be earning hundreds of
dollars every single year for just doing what you’re already doing but with Bing. There’s
actually a bunch of hardcore Bing users who have this down to a science. This one reddit user,
for example, estimates that he’s earning $8.24 per hour by just using Bing normally. Obviously,
searching on Bing won’t replace your job, but it might get a you free pizza or Chipotle every month
or so. And many have figured, if they’re willing to let Google sell their data, they might as
well let Microsoft sell their data and at least get free food out of it. Speaking of data, some
people still have hope that they can secure their privacy online, and many of these people have
chosen to use DuckDuckGo over Google. If you’re not familiar with DuckDuckGo, they’re a search
engine who’s entire pitch is basically “we’re anti Google”. Essentially, they don’t collect any
data about you and they have no idea who you even are. Basically imagine Chrome incognito if it was
actually incognito. Aside from not tracking your search history, DuckDuckGo also tries to connect
you to encrypted versions of websites whenever possible, but it’s not all sunshines and rainbows.
At the end of the day, DuckDuckGo is a company who needs to make money, and the way they make
money is of course sponsored search results. It’s simply that these ads aren’t targetted. We should
also note that while DuckDuckGo themselves don’t collect data, DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing or
Microsoft. They have tried their best to block as many Microsoft tracking scripts as possible,
but they’re not 100% successful. Nonetheless, for many, this is magnitudes better than using
Bing or Google directly. For the more cynical ones, well they figured, if you can’t fight em,
you might as well join em, and these are the people that flocked over to Bing.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
Alright, so a subset of the population has shifted over to using Bing and DuckDuckGo due
to their appeals of money and privacy. While this has made a dent in Google’s marketshare, it’s by
no means the biggest culprit. The biggest culprit is actually social media, and it’s not just in a
few niches either, it’s across the board. Take the how to space for example. 10 years ago,
you may have Googled “how to know if you’ve been ghosted” and read a WikiHow article about it. But,
now, you can sit back, relax, and reflect on your failed social life on YouTube. Jokes aside though,
it was actually difficult to find high quality how to’s on YouTube for niche topics 10 years
ago. But, now, you can find detailed videos on literally anything that you can think of. And
I don’t know about you, but for me, following videos is way easier than following articles
and pictures, not to mention more enjoyable. The same thing could be said about news as
well. 10 years ago, if you wanted to follow the Fed or the stock market,
you’d probably have to read the New York Times or Bloomberg or watch cable TV. But,
now, there’s thousands of YouTube channels, TikTok pages, Twitter accounts, Discord communities, and
WhatsApp groups that are relaying each and every development faster and more digestible than CNBC.
This medium is just made even better by the fact that it’s a lot more interactive. While NBC may
have a massive viewerbase, you can’t just scroll don’t to comments and share your thoughts or see
what other people are thinking just like half of you are probably doing right this very second. We
have virtually no way of reaching someone like George Stephanopoulos or Jerome Powell. But,
we can actually tweet at Elon Musk and there’s actually a chance that he’ll reply and even
better chance that he’ll read it. Even if our tweet doesn’t come across Elon, it’s more than
likely that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will see it especially if it’s something
insightful or funny. But, social media making everything more learnable, viewable, and enjoyable
compared to Google is just half the story. The other key point to note is that we no longer
search for the content we consume. Statistically speaking, 82.4% of you are here because YouTube
recommended this video to you. Only 5.2% of you are here because you actually searched for it.
And even amongst the people who are here from search results, I bet you searched up Logically
Answered as opposed to the actual title of this video. This statistic is simply even more relevant
for a platform like TikTok or Instagram where you’re not really supposed to search at all,
you’re just supposed to scroll. The algorithm already knows what you wanna watch before you
know yourself whether it’s infotainment, funny memes, or thirst traps. And when everything you
need is offered to you without you even doing anything, well you end up searching far less.
AI:
While we’re all searching far less than we were 10 years ago, there’s still a place for searching.
Sometimes, you just need information fast. Maybe, you need to fact check something or troubleshoot
something technical. In virtually all of these cases, what you need isn’t fancy articles or
videos, what you need is raw data. And any article or video that you need to get through is simply an
obstacle, not an enhancement. While this was often annoying, for decades, this was something that we
simply didn’t even question. If you needed data fast, you went to Google, searched for what you
want, scrolled past the sponsored results, clicked on the most reputable website you could find, and
skimmed through until you found what you needed. Oftentimes, you’d have to press the back button,
go into another article, and do even more skimming to truly find what you needed. Now of course,
this is a first world problem. 50 years ago or even just without the internet,
getting information is literally a million times harder. But, with that being said,
we now have options that are way better than even Google. ChatGPT, for example has been
making a lot of noise recently. You just have to ask it a question, and it’ll do all the searching,
skimming, and compiling. But, ChatGPT is just the latest example of this.
One technology that has already been part of our lives for years now is voice assistants like Siri,
Alexa, and Google. These assistants are already great getting simple facts like how old is Joe
Biden or what’s the weather like. For more advanced questions, they often just direct you
to Google.com, but that’s simply because they’re not advanced enough yet. We should also note that
Apple doesn’t redirect you to Google.com out of the kindness of their heart. Google actually pays
Apple and Samsung an undisclosed amount every year which is estimated to be in the billions
just to stay the default search engine. So, you can bet that once AI becomes good enough
to reliably replace Google.com, these guys are gonna be the first to jump ship. Now,
we should note that Google themselves will also be jumping ship, so it’s not like Google as a
company will be left behind, but Google.com will. This shift towards AI will simply be accelerated
by the fact that these AI offerings will likely be a lot better at telling you what you want to
here. They’ll be able to cherry pick data points and form arguments and answers that fit your
perspectives and beliefs. This is one of the main reasons social media platforms are so successful
in the first place. They’re able to serve you content that you already agree with. While this
creates massive echo chambers and is terrible for having healthy dicussions and debates,
it’s perfect for maximizing user retention and usage. And subconsciously, people will enjoy
using these platforms even more. And before you know it, Google.com will be a relic from the past.
THE FUTURE OF GOOGLE: In the end, the search
interest around Google has declined substantially over the past several years. Some of this can be
attributed to direct competitors like Bing and DuckDuckGo, but most of this actually has to do
with the rapidly shrinking search market. While most of us probably didn’t notice,
on average, we don’t search nearly as much as we once used to because we simply don’t have
to. We’re able to get all the information that we need from social media and AI. None of this
is to say that Google as a company is screwed by any means. First of all, they own YouTube,
the largest social media platform in the world. They’re also involved in thousands of businesses
from maps and email to operating systems and the cloud. Also, Google is at the forefront of this AI
revolution and are perfectly positioned for the shift. So, Google as a whole will be just fine,
but that’s why Google.com’s interest has been falling off a cliff. Did you realize how much
less we tend to use search engines. Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you’re excited
but also scared for AI. And of course, consider checking out our discord community to suggest
future video ideas and consider subscribing to see more questions logically answered.