Even if Google wins its antitrust case, it could still lose the future of search — thanks to a shift toward AI
Photo: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg (Getty Images)
When Vineet Jain, the CEO of cloud management company Egnyte, decided to spend four days without using Google $GOOGL Search, he was “blown away” by how clean and simple AI interfaces were: no clutter at the top of his screen, no ads, just the answers. Shortly after, his 15-year-old son told him, “We don’t use Google anymore. We do everything with ChatGPT.”
That shift in user behavior comes as the U.S. Department of Justice gears up for a defining ruling in its long-running antitrust case against Google. In a decision expected by August, Judge Amit Mehta will decide whether Google must unwind its lucrative default-search deals and spin off its Chrome browser.
“If you remember the Samson and Delilah story where Samson’s power was in his hair, [Google’s] ‘hair’ is going to be search,” Jain said. And that search business may very well be on the chopping block — even if the DOJ doesn’t win its case.
In the first quarter of 2025, Google’s advertising revenue reached $66.9 billion, with $50.7 billion coming from Google Search — thanks largely to its iron-clad position as the default on browsers and devices. That default status is the quiet engine behind its dominance: In 2022, Google paid Apple $AAPL over $20 billion to be the preset search engine on Safari, locking in the company’s share of mobile eyeballs. Chrome, Google’s browser, adds even more gravitational pull.
For years, regulators have circled Google over its dominance in search — and the advertising empire built on it. But what if the real existential risk isn’t legal at all? What if it’s behavioral?
Search is no longer analogous to Google. ChatGPT and other AI-native tools are starting to pull traffic and attention away from traditional search engines by answering questions directly, skipping the blue links, and ignoring the ad slots altogether. According to a recent report from Mary Meeker, ChatGPT hit a billion searches a day in less than two years; Google needed 11 years to reach that mark.
Jain said Mehta’s ruling could be a “watershed moment” for Google “in terms of how they regulate their platform power. Because they have become a behemoth — in search, display, advertising, everything related to it.”
As AI search starts to capture a larger share of the search market, Jain said the argument Google could make is, “‘Hey, we are not a monopoly anymore. We’re not as dominant as you’re making us out to be.’”
But whether the company wins or loses the antitrust case, the deeper problem remains: Google is built around an advertising model that depends on search volume, attention, and high-intent queries. Unlike pure AI chatbots, which can deliver answers free of sponsorship, Google can’t simply declutter its interface without cutting off the revenue stream that fuels its empire.
And while Google has begun integrating AI into its products — from AI overviews to Gemini — it’s trying to have it both ways: serve direct answers while keeping users scrolling and clicking long enough to monetize their attention. That’s a far harder trick than it sounds, especially as users come to expect stripped-down, ad-free experiences from tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude.
And the scale of the business makes any change feel like trying to turn an ocean liner. “Google Search, in terms of its contribution to the overall Google pie, is so disproportionately large it’s almost like a massive, massive, ten-times-the-size-of-the-Titanic that you’re trying to move,” Jain said. “So it’ll take time.”
How Google adjusts to the changing market is the “$10-plus-billion question,” he said.
Google’s dominance in search was never just about having the best engine. It’s also about placement — and payments. That strategy is what’s on trial. Mehta is weighing whether these default arrangements violate antitrust law by unfairly shutting out competition. A ruling that forces Google to unwind its “default” approach could dramatically shake up how users access search — and open the door for competitors to gain ground.
“Over time, given the size and heft [Google has], there will be a gradual atrophy in the search traffic going to them,” Jain said.
He said he expects some regulatory response regardless of the outcome. “There’ll be some action. I can predict. There’ll be some action,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s gonna be, and I hope the Chrome divestiture, if it happens, it’s done in a favorable way” — where it’s not bought by a competitor, such as OpenAI, which has expressed interest.
Any erosion to Google’s core business may not grab headlines like a courtroom ruling, but it could be as consequential. Just as Microsoft $MSFT missed the mobile revolution while defending its Windows monopoly, Google risks clinging to its current business model while the next paradigm quietly passes it by. This isn’t the first time Google has faced a potential disruption — mobile search, voice assistants, and vertical platforms like Amazon $AMZN and TikTok have all chipped away at its dominance.
But generative AI is different. It doesn’t just offer an alternative to search — it threatens the idea of search itself.
The irony is that Google has long known this moment was coming. In 2011, then-CEO Eric Schmidt warned that “the next Google” wouldn’t look like a search engine — “we’re trying to move from answers that are link-based to answers that are algorithmically based, where we can actually compute the right answer,” he said. That future is here, but Google’s own business incentives are pulling it in the opposite direction. The company can’t become a pure-answer engine without undercutting the ad clicks that make up the bulk of its revenue.
And that tension will only grow more painful as AI-native tools accelerate. Jain predicts search will remain Google’s biggest revenue contributor “for at least the next five to seven years,” but beyond that, the fundamentals begin to wobble.
Still, he’s not betting against the company. “People underestimate Google and the intellectual horsepower they bring to the table. And they are no slouches,” Jain said. “I would not bet against Google at this point.”
But even the smartest players can miss the moment if they’re too busy protecting the past. So while Google isn’t going anywhere — traditional search might be.
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