The Battle For Search, Fed Rate Decision, Chip Export Reform

The Battle For Search

Trust is a precious commodity. It is the one thing every brand attempts to foster. Once attained, most seek to exploit it for profit. That is not always the best strategy. Most overplay their hand to the determinant of shareholders.

How many times have each of us seen a product that initially focuses on quality only to subsequently sacrifice workmanship in service to profits.

That was certainly the case for several auto companies when accountants replaced engineers in the C-suite.

Shrinkflation, where portion sizes decline but the price stays the same, falls into the same category.

This has also been a creeping trend in the tech sector. The adoption of the subscription business model has been revolutionary for Microsoft’s profitability but the customer experience has suffered.

Amazon built its online marketplace on convenience and the reliability of the products offered. In 2019 they adopted an advertising model.

That changed how items floated to the top of the search algorithm. It was no longer about reviews and price but instead focused on ad spend.

The announcement from a senior Apple executive today that iPhone traffic is favouring AI over Google resulted in a sharp drop in share.

Here is the problem, I can’t remember the last time I paid attention to the first result on a Google search. It feels like the page is now dominated by ads, then my AI and finally by what approximates a conventional search result.

The willingness of Google to censor and deplatform opposing political voices in the years both before and after the pandemic was also a significant factor in damaging trust. At a minimum it damaged the sense of objectivity that is essential to trust in a search result.

Google has steadily sacrificed trust in the quality of its search results in service to boosting profitability. That hubris has encouraged competition.

As far as I can see there are two primary attack vectors. The first is AI which is a direct threat to Google’s search.