The Future of Search is Open

🔓 Why Google is about to be disrupted.

🎙️ Audio Intro: 2:08. 🎧

Hello Everyone,

Is 2024 the year web search changes forever? Recently StatCounter, a free online visitor statistics tool that was founded in 1999 by Aodhan Cullen, an Irish web designer claimed that in April Google lost a ton of marketshare to the likes of Bing and Yahoo. Their figures they offer up are empirically very hard to believe given the numbers they cite and have not been independently verified.

But could there be a bigger agenda?

🗳️ POLL 👀

Would you use an openAI web search product instead of Google?

While consumer behavior is changing, the figures they cite don’t seem realistic given historical baselines. While SEO itself seems to be burning, Google’s reputation among American consumers is not great due to a high prevalence of Ads on the first page and lower overall quality in recent years.

Statcounter has updated its search engine market share stats for April – and the results are shocking, and probably not even possible. If they’re true and I’m even more doubtful than Search Engine Land – but could Statcounter’s wake-up call, whether they are exaggerated or not, might be a sign of things to come?

By the numbers. Google’s U.S. search market share in the U.S. fell to 77.52% in April, down from 86.94% in March and down from 88.8% in April 2023.

Meanwhile:

• According to Statcounter (whom I never have heard of before), Microsoft Bing grew to 13.05% in April, up from 8.04% in March.

• Yahoo (!) grew to 7.3%, up from 2.48% in March.

Again, this is not verified. See why I’m skeptical yet? How are Microsoft Bing and Yahoo growing that much in one month? But wait, there’s more.

March to April (below) in 2024

April

Supposedly in the last month the drop has been even more significant, from March, 2024 to April, 2024.

OpenAI’s Rumored Web-Search Launch is Close

Here’s where the story gets really weird.

I don’t think we can take Statcounter as a great or credible source on this, and if the rumor that OpenAI is on May 9th making an announcement before Google’s own I/O 2024 event about their Search web product is to be believed, OpenAI could have manipulated Statcounter data to make build a false sense of FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) is a manipulative propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, polling, and cults. OpenAI as an R&D wing of Microsoft, able to do such things with an absolutely gigantic comms/PR team.

Kyle Scott’s interview on Reid Hoffman’s podcast recently was a tell-tale sign of how orchestrated the partnership with OpenAI was.

• In this article I will speculate on OpenAI’s evolution of their web-search product

• I will also name other players who could get involved if Google’s search market dominance is over.

Still it would be odd to use another web Search to totally replace Google, but I could see some of doing just that.