Google says its search function is not dead, it’s thriving.
In a Wednesday earnings call, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google’s AI-powered features, such as AI Overviews and AI mode, were driving growth in search queries.
Pichai said he saw this in full effect during the FIFA World Cup that started in June and wrapped up on Sunday.
“As a big football fan, I was particularly excited to see search usage hit an all-time high during the World Cup this year,” he said. “This really highlights how much people turn to Google in moments that matter.”
He said Google’s AI-powered search function, AI Mode, has surpassed a billion monthly active users since it was expanded globally last October. The tool is driving an “incremental increase in search queries overall,” and is allowing Google to “send billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search,” he said.
Pichai added during the earnings call that Google saw 17% revenue growth in search driven by these tools, and that the company will continue to make search more “helpful and intuitive.”
Search is one of Google’s largest cash cows. It was the third-highest revenue-producing product in Alphabet’s latest quarter earnings, edged out only by advertising and Google Services.
The company on Wednesday reported its latest quarter earnings of $119.8 billion, up 24% from a year earlier. Its stock was down 1.24% at market close.
The tech executive’s comments contradict the fears many publishers had when Google began integrating AI more aggressively into its search engine.
Many media companies and publishers reported their traffic dropping as users are increasingly becoming satisfied with AI answers, which are scraped from traditional websites without linking back to their sources.