Google Search is so ubiquitous that there are people for whom Google is synonymous with the internet. Hundreds of millions of people use it daily. It occupies 87% of the market of global search engines. In 2020, it earned $147.000 billion in advertising revenue. And advertising accounts for 80% of Google's total revenue.

"It's crazy that there is now a single, gigantic monopoly that decides what you read, what you consume, what you buy, and you have no control over that." comments Richard Socher, CEO of you.com.

But Google's reliance on the ad service is hurting the quality of search. “They don't want to make the content more relevant because this would reduce the
relevance of the notices”, Socher maintains.
Socher and his partner Bryan McCann helped create Einstein, the artificial intelligence of Salesforce. They now aim to free the internet search process from advertising and SEO (search optimization) bias so that users have more control over internet search.
The emergence of deep learning and especially its successful application to natural language processing (NLP) helped Google establish its dominance as a search engine. In 2015, it added RankBrain, which allowed it to find words or phrases with meanings similar to those proposed by users. Four years later, Google added BERT, a language model that helps the search engine understand the context of the relationship between the words searched for.
It is not easy to compete with a monopoly like Google. And our established habits - especially our choice of convenience over privacy - also act as a barrier to new entrants from entering the search engine market. However, there are signs that something is beginning to change in the field.
Charlize Warzel recently published in The Atlantic, The Open Secret of Google Search, where she says, “Like many, I turn to Google to answer most of the mundane things that come my way on a day-to-day basis. And the first page of search results I feel less and less useful. And it's not just me, frustration has become a persistent meme: Google Search, which for many is an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or dying. In recent years, through various forums and social media platforms, people have been commenting that Google's flagship is leaking. If you are looking for "google dying on Twitter or Reddit you will find people grumbling since the middle of the last decade. But lately, criticism has grown considerably.

And search engines like you.com or DuckDuckGo -which prioritizes privacy in search- are appearing, and they are experiencing great growth. Many people are disappointed with the Google search engine because lately this search engine refers us to company websites instead of offering us information about the requested words. Some users are turning to alternative search engines like you.com or DucDuckGo. Others are adding the word Reddit to the query to get a wider range of options outside of the ad business.
And above all, a generational change is taking place. Around 40% of Gen Z youth are preferring to find information directly on other platforms, especially TikTok. This is data provided by Prabhaar Raghavan, vice president of Google to Fortune magazine at a recent event. An internal Google investigation found that nearly half of 18-24 year olds use TikTok and Instagram instead of Google Maps or Google Search, TechCrunch reports.
And the reason is that young people prefer visual platforms to having to read. “It's one thing to read about what to do in this area or how a certain product works, and another thing to see it,” says a 21-year-old Florida resident.
Improvements to TikTok's search tools -- such as a predictive text feature that suggests common searches as the user is typing -- have also meant they don't have to turn to other platforms.
Talia Magge, 24, says she and her group of friends learn visually, and with TikTok it's quicker and easier to watch a video on a topic you're interested in learning more about.
For many young people TikTok already works as a search engine. Even more effective than Google. Product recommendations, things to do, shows to watch and much more, they prefer to find them in TikTok videos.