Google's $500bn loss shows AI threat to its search dominance

Google lost $500bn in market value on October 29th after quarterly earnings showed its search ad revenue growth slowed to 11%, its weakest pace in five quarters, raising fears that AI chatbots are disrupting its core business. The slowdown stems from Google's "AI Mode" in search, which produces chatbot-like answers with lower monetisation than traditional results. Meanwhile, Meta, which has integrated AI more aggressively into its advertising tools, saw 26% ad revenue growth and may soon overtake Google as the world's largest ad seller. Amazon also reported slowing ad growth on the same day, falling to 12% year-on-year from 26% previously. Analysts note double-digit growth remains historically strong, but the pressure on all three tech giants' advertising cash cows intensifies as they invest heavily in AI data centres.