Bizarre search results, battles in court - is it game over for Google?

RICHARD GODWIN asks if time could finally be running out for the all-powerful behemoth

- RICHARD GODWIN

Is it me, or have Google search results become rubbish? Look up "how come Google sucks now?" and Google itself seems to have its doubts. At the top of the page, there's a new AI summary from Google Gemini: it might be to do with spam, or bots, or that horrible phrase, search engine optimisation, it helpfully suggests. It might be the "fast-changing nature of the internet". It might be the trillion-dollar company's own priorities. "Some say that Google cares more about self-preservation and profit than searcher satisfaction," it ventures.

In any other domain, such customer dissatisfaction would quickly affect a company's bottom line. If everyone suddenly noticed that, say, M&S underwear was full of spiders, or Ford Focuses no longer had enough wheels, they would take their business elsewhere. But when Google showers us with annoying adverts, or misdirects us to the wrong hotel, or tells us that glue is an essential ingredient in pizza (as Gemini famously did when it launched), most of us don't know where to turn. There are other search engines: but Google is so central to mine and others' experience of the internet they do not feel like meaningful alternatives. I wrote this article on a Google Doc, on my Google Chrome browser, and sent it off via Gmail.

But there are signs the tables are turning.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, is facing unprecedented challenges to its dominance: in the shape of antitrust lawsuits, new competition from AI rivals, and ambient dissatisfaction. Those who have long held it's unhealthy for one company to have so much unaccountable power are starting to imagine what a post-Google world might look like.

Panicky missteps