• Google stock tumbled Wednesday after Apple's executive Eddy Cue said AI rivals were cutting into the search giant.
• Google responded by saying that's not the case.
• It's possible that both arguments are correct. The stakes are very high.

Is Google screwed?

That's the $2 trillion question the tech world is trying to understand following Wednesday's blockbuster news: A top Apple executive said search queries on the company's Safari browser were declining because people were using AI engines like ChatGPT instead.

Investors immediately acted as if Google's astonishing run at the top of the tech heap was over, and slashed the company's stock by more than 8%.

But a day later, Google's stock was climbing back up a bit, and there's a healthy debate about what Cue's statement means — as well as why he said it.

Spoiler: I'm not going to solve this one today. But let's at least look at the argument.

The most obvious way to view Cue's comments was the way Wall Street did: that Google search dominance was being eroded by AI competitors.

After all, fear of being usurped by AI is what pushed Google to fast-track its own AI efforts, even when some of those efforts created embarrassing results.

But later on Wednesday, Google put out a statement that basically said Cue was wrong, without actually saying that out loud. Instead, the company said it was continuing to see increasing searches, and "that includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms."

So that looks like two of the world's most powerful and valuable companies are disagreeing over basic, knowable facts.

But people who pay attention to this stuff are focusing on three key words in Google's statement: "total," "devices," and "platforms." And the absence of another word: "Safari."

And that's leading them to translate Google's statement this way: "Maybe Apple really is seeing fewer searches on Safari, the default web browser on iPhones. But you can use Google in other ways on iPhones — namely, via the Google app, but also via Google's own Chrome browser. And people are using those more — enough to counter any decline elsewhere."

Assuming that this translation is accurate, that should reassure Google and its boosters a bit, though not completely: Cue said the searches on Safari were down for the first time ever, and that's not the kind of signal you can just wave away.

And even if Safari Google searchers are really moving to things like the Google app instead, that also underlines the fact that people who used to just type something into their iPhone browser know now they can get results other ways. And there's no reason they couldn't also be searching on Google competitors like ChatGPT.

A Google rep declined to comment; Apple hasn't responded to my request for comment.

Google investors, by the way, don't seem 100% convinced by Google's statement: The stock is up 3% on Thursday, which means Google is still worth 5% less than it was Wednesday morning, when Cue started testifying in the US vs. Google antitrust trial.

Which brings us to the second question Google and Apple watchers are speculating about: Why did Cue say what he said in court, after all?

I'm an Occam's razor guy, so my first take was that Cue answered the questions he was asked in court.

But there's also a 4D chess argument, put forth by folks like MoffettNathanson's analyst Michael Nathanson. It goes like this: Cue has an incentive to portray Google as a wounded animal.

That's because Google pays Apple at least $20 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on Safari (that's the reason Cue has insight into Google's search activity), and a federal judge has already declared that Google has an illegal monopoly in search.

And one of the remedies the judge could push for would be to prevent Google from paying Apple for that valuable real estate — which would mean Apple could lose all of that high-margin revenue.

So, the theory goes, convincing the judge that Google no longer has a stranglehold on search, because of AI competition, might allow those payments to keep flowing after all.

That theory also helps explain Google's muted response on Wednesday night, where the company tried to walk the line between tooting its own horn (which bucks up investors but could damage its legal argument) and acknowledging that it has real competition (which could help Google in court but hurt it in the market).

Which brings us back to where we started: Is Google really starting to lose out to the ChatGPTs of the world, and entering a permanent decline, just like pay-TV networks a decade ago? Or is it holding its own despite the competition? Depending on where you're asking the question, Google might give you a different answer.

Correction: May 8, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated which company the Safari browser belongs to. It's Apple, not Google.

• YouTube is big. Really big. Really, really big.
• How big? Try this: It's about to become the biggest media company in the world. Bigger than Disney.
• Reminder: This company is only two decades old.

You're still not paying enough attention to YouTube.

I know, I know: Some of you know that YouTube is not just a big force in media, but one of the biggest. But most folks — even people who make their living in media — don't fully get how big YouTube is. Even though we keep pointing it out, over and over.

So let's try it again, this time courtesy of MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson: Measured by revenue, YouTube was the second-biggest media company in the world last year. It brought in $54.2 billion in 2024 — just $5.5 billion behind Disney.

And in 2025, Nathanson predicts, YouTube should eclipse Disney, and become the biggest media company in the world.

Reminder: YouTube started a mere 20 years ago. Google bought the company for $1.65 billion in 2006.

If you wanted to, you could quibble with Nathanson's groupings. You could argue that Google itself is actually the biggest media company in the world since it generates close to $350 billion in annual revenue, the majority of which comes from ads. And that Meta, which generated $160 billion in ad sales last year, is also much bigger. You could also point out in his comparison, Nathanson has pulled out Disney's $30+ billion-a-year parks business, which is a huge part of Bob Iger's empire and one that's directly connected to its media properties.

But like I said, quibbles. The point is that YouTube commands an extraordinary amount of time and interest from its users, who are no longer just kids but everyone. (Reminder: When you hear about politicians trying to reach audiences via podcasts, that also means they're trying to reach them via YouTube.) And that advertisers, who took some time to figure that out — but get it now — are pouring money in to reach that audience.

More evidence for YouTube's hugeness? OK. Nathanson also predicts that the company's YouTube TV subscription business is set to become the biggest pay-TV provider in the country by 2026, as it keeps adding subscribers while rivals Comcast and Charter shed theirs.

He also guesstimates that as a stand-alone company, YouTube might be worth $475 billion to $550 billion — between Meta and Netflix's valuations.

The point is: Any you slice it, numerically, YouTube is ginormous.

That scale also makes it harder to get your head around. Unlike, say, a conventional media company, or a streamer, there's no flagship network, or program, or movie that works as a shorthand for YouTube's dominance: YouTube doesn't have a "Stranger Things" or a "Barbie" or the Marvel MCU.

The closest analog would be MrBeast, but that really doesn't get at it — MrBeast is huge, but if you're not a young boy, you're probably not watching his stuff. And lots of people who consume YouTube don't really think that they're "watching YouTube" — they're just watching the thing they want to watch, which is on YouTube.

So maybe it's more helpful to think of YouTube as a utility — even if you don't think about it that much, you're using it all the time. A utility worth half a trillion dollars.