Google facing real AI threat in search, might be time to worry, Barron’s says

Google is one of the best businesses ever built, but the market now fears it could all come unglued by a torrent of new competition from artificial intelligence, Eric J. Savitz writes in this week’s edition of Barron’s. To be sure, it hasn’t happened yet. By one estimate, Google still accounts for 39% of the global ad market. But the Alphabet story is finally showing cracks, the publication says. Google’s search business, once an unassailable iron fortress, now looks vulnerable thanks to AI, a technology in which Google, ironically, plays a leading role, the author adds, arguing that Google now faces the prospect of an eternal game of chatbot Whac-A-Mole.