Google said its priority is to ensure that its search engine is “always available,” whether users are checking the score of a game in progress or getting updates on a hurricane.
“Google Search has changed a lot over the years, but two things have remained constant from the beginning: speed and reliability,” Google began its April 17 blog post.
Google Search must be “ready when you need it,” whether you’re checking the score or looking for the latest information about an event in progress, the company said. Its servers are always prepared for traffic spikes.
To do this, Google has built a global search infrastructure, with data centers that can handle billions of searches per day. Google estimates that a user would need to perform 150,000 searches before encountering a problem related to the company's servers. If a person searches 10 times a day, they could use the tool for up to 40 years without a problem.
"The system is designed to handle huge demand and operate under high pressure, even when faced with unexpected spikes," Google said. "Our experts constantly evaluate 'signals' from users to analyze, identify weaknesses in the system, and build mitigations."
Google also emphasizes speed. The company assesses that in today's world of "instant gratification," delays can cause users to leave the platform. As a result, the search engine must be as fast as possible.
Speed is what makes Google's search performance unrivaled. The company says that improvements in latency have saved users more than a million hours a day over the past two years. AI is expected to make querying even faster. For example, AI Overviews, the summary at the top of Google Search results, has been live since last year in more than 100 countries with more than a billion users. However, this feature is also embroiled in litigation.
According to Android Headline, when it launched in 1998, Google created a revolution. Instead of just scanning content, the tool also looked at the sources linking to a website, assessing its relevance and appropriateness. This breakthrough helped Google surpass all previous tools in retrieving results. For 25 years, Google Search dominated the Internet search space, while having few serious problems.
Google still dominates the market, but its share is starting to decline. Survey data from analytics firm Evercore shows that Google's market share was 78% in December 2024, down from 80% in June of the same year. A change of a few percentage points is not too big. However, AI search engines like ChatGPT and Grok are believed to be a factor in the decline in Google Search users. According to Evercore, 5% of respondents used ChatGPT to find information online in December 2024, while only 1% had used it six months earlier.
In addition, Google's dominance in the search market has also led to accusations of monopoly. In August 2024, the company received a judgment from a district court in Washington, DC on its monopoly on online search. The trial is set to take place next week, in which Google could face an order to sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to end its dominance. On April 17, a US court also concluded that Google had illegally built "monopoly power" and dominated the online advertising market.