Google still dominates search, but the artificial intelligence era is creating new pressures on its core business. Traffic is slipping, rivals are growing, and some users are actively looking for alternatives.
Over the past month, Google's search traffic fell more than 1%, according to data from Ahrefs. Over the same period, ChatGPT traffic edged up.
Google still holds around 90% of the global search market. Its stock has more than doubled in the past year. Revenue growth in the first quarter of 2026 was the fastest since 2022.
But the cracks are visible.
Talent Departures Rattle Investors
Last week, Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering and co-lead of Gemini AI, announced he was leaving Google to join OpenAI. Days later, John Jumper, a DeepMind vice president and engineering fellow, said he was heading to Anthropic.
The departures rattled markets. Alphabet's stock dropped 5% on Monday, its worst single-day performance in more than a year.
Analysts at Jefferies said the exits reflect an "industry-wide war for talent" rather than a sign Google is pulling back on AI investment.
Users Are Turning to Alternatives
DuckDuckGo has seen install rates rise as much as 75% since Google's I/O developer conference in May, where Google announced it would place an AI Mode button directly inside the search box for the first time in 25 years.
Microsoft's Bing reached 1 billion users for the first time last quarter. Anthropic's Claude ranks eighth on the Apple iOS free app chart, one spot behind Google's own Gemini.
A Pew Research Center study from March found roughly half of Americans feel more concerned than excited about AI in their daily lives. Some are choosing non-AI search tools as a result.
DuckDuckGo launched browser extensions this month that let users default to a no-AI version of its search engine.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged on a recent podcast that people are "rightfully" anxious about the scale of change AI represents.
Publishers Feel the Squeeze
About 68% of all Google searches now end without a single click to an outside website, according to data from SparkToro and Similarweb. AI summaries at the top of results reduce the need to click through.
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said last month his team has been forecasting search traffic declines for three years, and each year the drop exceeded expectations. "Last year, I told our teams assume there's no search," he said.
Google admitted in an antitrust filing last year that the open web is "already in rapid decline."
Google is currently in an antitrust battle with the US Department of Justice over its search business.
Ads still make up about three-quarters of Google's revenue. The company is spending close to $200 billion on AI infrastructure while also funding long-term projects like Waymo.
Despite Monday's drop, Alphabet's stock remains up more than 100% over the past year.
