Google has been the default or “standard” search engine for billions of users around the world. What allowed the company to triumph over its competitors, like Yahoo, early in the day was its ability to display more relevant search results. However, in 2025, the company’s search engine could start to look drastically different. This is because Google is hoping to evolve Search into more of an AI assistant.
AI-powered Search
In the past couple of years, Google has integrated AI its search engine. This comes in the form of AI overviews. These overviews act as enhanced versions of Google’s traditional search snippets or cards. It provided users with more detailed and insightful responses powered by AI.
Instead of showing brief pieces of information, like a typical Google card, AI overviews give users more comprehensive answers. For instance, when searching for a specific topic, AI overviews can give you a richer and more contextually-aware summary. It even provides users with links to these sources if they want to do more research or double-check the facts.
During Alphabet’s Q4 2024 earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the company’s ambition to more aggressively integrate its AI into search, transforming it from what we’re already familiar with into a personal AI assistant. He envisions this evolution could take place in 2025.
This means that in the future, searching for something on Google could be a faster and more efficient process. Users may no longer have to comb through multiple links to find what they are looking for.
Google’s plan mirrors a similar approach that OpenAI has gone for in recent times. OpenAI initially introduced ChatGPT as a conversational AI that responds to direct queries. Users could speak to it in natural language and it would respond in kind. However, OpenAI later expanded on this functionality with its own ChatGPT Search tool. This is very similar to what Google seems to be aiming for with Search in 2025.
The risks of AI-powered Search
Google turning its Search into an AI assistant has its obvious benefit. The most obvious is that it could make it much easier for users to find exactly what they’re looking for. However, there are some potential risks to consider. This is especially so for businesses that rely on Google Search to drive traffic to their websites, like us over at Android Headlines.
Given that Google is the largest search engine in the world, it can drive tremendous amounts of traffic to websites that are listed at the top of its search results. However, by creating an AI assistant that would summarize the information for users, we wouldn’t be surprised if many websites and businesses were to see a massive decline in traffic.
Additionally, businesses that invest heavily in Google ads may be affected. AI-powered search results may reduce the need for users to click on paid advertisements. If users are able to get all the information they need directly from Google’s AI, what’s the point of clicking on an ad?
That being said, despite these concerns, Google is still pushing ahead. We imagine that similar to current AI models, Google’s AI search assistant will provide users with citations and links for contextual purposes, but whether or not users click these links is an entirely different story.
