What is "Google's self-inflicted implosion"?

JoeyDonuts

Joined
Jul 29, 2023
Messages
7
Likes
8
Degree
0
Just had an email update from the board and the headline was "Everyone is digging deep trying to find new ways to compensate for Google's self-inflicted implosion"

What is this referring to? is there a link or a topic where it's being discussed, whatever it is?

thanks
 
I'm not seeing much sign of such a thing:

https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users
https://www.statista.com/statistics/539447/google-global-net-advertising-revenues/

If people suddenly preferred a 'different type of AI search' Google seems to have the AI chops to quickly copy it too, right, so even if people had magically preferred the new Bing or whatever it wouldn't have been an advantage for long.

With the strength of Gemini and improvements in Bard I'm not surprised to see this either - most analysts having google as a buy/strong buy:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/goog/analysis/?guccounter=1
 
I assume the self inflicted implosion is referring to the spate of updates over the last couple years that has literally everyone (both SEOs and normies) saying how shit Google search has become.

Isn't Gen Z all about using TikTok as a search engine now?

I think the reason financial analysts still have G as a buy is likely because of AI developments, not search.

Matter of fact, I think Google is literally PUNTING everything to do with search (organic + paid) because they know the future is focused somewhere else - probably AI related.

Yes, it's still the case that ~60% of their revenue is ads, but that isn't just search ads on SERPs. It's also gmail, play store, etc. I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of their ads revenue by source.

Just look at how Google's search side has been acting, it's either they've hired incompetent people or they just don't care about search anymore and are coasting on it's profits, focusing their engineering somewhere else.

I could be wrong, of course. But that's my $0.02.
 
I think Sundar Pichai is going to end up fired soon. According to the criticism he is treating google like merely another old tired brand to exploit for short term profit optimization.

Google is fucking up a lot more than they used to. Currently you can't click maps from basic searches. It's been like that for two weeks. This is not normal for Google to have functionality breaking bugs for that long. I don't think I can remember that happening before in the last 10 years.
 
Thanks for these inputs, useful stuff.
I dare say... maybe profits are secondary to POWER now. There may be more profit in a better search and less focus on AI, but there's a damn sight more power in investing/using AI, power over people I mean, and at some point the richest people/companies start moving towards power when money becomes so easy and plentiful. Remember when FuckerBerg declined that insane amount of money for Facebook (was it 50Billion?) years ago, from a profit perspective it was a no brainer, IF he just wanted to make more money than he knew what to do with. But that's not the only motivator. If, let's just say, he preferred ego and power, the declining of that offer makes a lot of sense, as he knew that one day he'd have practically EVERY HUMAN on earth using his platform for their news/purchases/communication with family... EVERYTHING. That's a shit ton of power in one man's hands, and if that's what he's motivated by, I can make sense of 50 Bill not really floating his boat as much as most people expected it to.

Anyway, I digress, just playing with ideas. The fact is, as far as I am concerned, AI threatens so many things that I wonder if SEO is going to survive. I know the arguments in favour of SEO surviving, I know them well! I still do wonder though, the world's changed a lot in the last 10-20 years and it's about to see (I think) changes that will make that pale into insignificance. I very much hope I am wrong here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back