Key takeaways
- Google has launched its new Perspectives search product for mobile and web
- The new product deftly handles competitors like TikTok, Instagram and even Reddit by bringing together social media answers in one Google search result
- Google’s stock price is up 34% this year, but has suffered two downgrades in a week as analysts share concerns over whether the company’s focus on AI could impact ad revenue
Google’s got a brand new toy. Google Perspectives is officially available on mobile and the web for users to try out as the company looks to innovate amidst the most competitive search engine landscape Google has faced in years as the likes of TikTok and Instagram attract younger users.
While the launch is an exciting new innovation for Google searchers, with the highly anticipated AI-powered Search Generative Experience on the way, investors are concerned about Google’s long-term focus and whether it could affect the Big Tech titan’s advertising revenue. We’ve got the details below.
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What is Google Perspectives?
Aiming to bring the ‘human’ element to search results, Google has launched its Perspectives filter as an additional feature to its core search engine app and web product. Perspectives, which appears as a separate tab, is designed to pull together relevant social media posts, videos and news to help answer a user’s query.
Naturally, the results focus on Google-owned results first, like YouTube videos, but TikTok, Reddit, Twitter and Instagram also feature as part of the answer as one big melting pot of human responses.
Google first announced the product in May. In a blog post, the incumbent search engine ruler describes the new feature as “making it easier to find authentic perspectives” and “with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience”.
Google is also working on its ‘helpful content system’, as part of a wider shift away from SEO-focused search results and more towards organic responses, or “hidden gems” as Google calls them, that can be found in forum posts or little-known websites.
Google’s answer to search issues and insurgents
Have you ever googled a question and then added ‘reddit’ at the end to access some real, unfiltered, human answers from Reddit forums? That’s exactly what Google Perspectives is looking to emulate – and wean its reliance on the volatile company, whose users have declared open warfare on its CEO.
A few weeks ago, Reddit announced it would charge a pretty hefty fee for its API access, akin to what Twitter introduced back in March. With many popular third-party Reddit apps now priced out of existence, its moderators and users responded with fury in the form of a two-day blackout which affected thousands of popular subreddits. Some have vowed to go dark indefinitely. The user revolt highlighted a flaw in Google’s search results: the search just isn’t as good without Reddit, which Perspectives aims to address.
Perspectives also addresses the rising number of people, particularly Gen Z, using TikTok as a search engine. Google’s own internal research has found that in 2022, 40% of young adults were using TikTok or Instagram to find new lunch places or the answer to a problem. TikTok even released an ad about it at the start of the year.
With Perspectives pulling in these search results in-house, Google is looking to fight back against companies eating into its search engine market share.
What else is going on at Google?
This latest search engine launch isn’t even the last slated change for Google’s core product. Search Generative Experience, which was announced earlier this year, intends to incorporate in-depth search results with the power of generative AI to summarize results.
It’s essentially a step up from Google Bard, which was hastily rushed out in the wake of competitor OpenAI’s runaway success with ChatGPT. Search Generative Experience isn’t widely available yet and is still testing, though early feedback shows users aren’t impressed so far.
Those with early access to the generative search have criticized the long loading times, inaccurate results and multiple error messages, suggesting Google has some way to go before the generative search experience is ready as a finished product.
Google stock’s performance this year
Aside from a not-so-tiny $100 billion bomb on the stock price earlier this year, as market jitters around generative AI caused Google’s share price to drop 11% after a mistake in the marketing materials, the stock has performed phenomenally well compared to last year.
Google has enjoyed a 34% lift to its share price as is currently trading at around $119. In comparison, Microsoft, which had the early edge over Google in the AI wars, has seen a 40% share price boost in the same period.
But there are clouds on the horizon for Google’s stock performance as analysts at Bernstein and UBS have downgraded their ratings for the shares. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley commented that Google is “kind of investing to stay in the same place”. Google’s share price has fallen 0.38% in the
The main reasons were concerns over the upcoming Search Generative Experience’s impact on search engine ad revenue, other Big Tech leaders eating into the search engine share in the future and upcoming regulatory challenges for the company. Wall Street is clearly a little concerned about the company’s long-term search engine dominance.
The bottom line
2023 has been the first time in decades that Google has felt pressure to innovate its search experience or risk obsolescence. With Microsoft making big generative AI leaps, TikTok and Instagram becoming the default for young people’s searching habits and Reddit blackouts affecting Google’s relevancy, it’s as close to crisis as the company’s ever been for its core product.
But this is Google we’re talking about. With a massive 90% search engine market share, it will be a long time before anyone knocks Google off of the top spot – and the company is likely banking on that time to plot out its long-term strategy against the issues and insurgents, and quell Wall Street’s fears.
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