Law 9: Winner Won’t Take All

When it comes to discovering information, Google has dominated the last 20 plus years.

Only with the 2023 launch of ChatGPT did the search monopoly begin to crack.

Now it seems to be such common knowledge even judges in Delaware acknowledge that search is no longer a monopoly—thwarting the breakup sought by the DOJ.

Of course, some folks are saying Google is going to win again.

From far behind in 2023, Gemini chatbot is now a leader, and Google search now often serves up AI Overviews instead of blue links. Plus just announced AI shopping tools.

Still, given Google’s cannibalizing its own core search business to stay relevant, it suggests it has got some serious competition this time around.

So what is going to happen?

Well, we may be done with the Winner Take All world.

Wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Instead, we will have multiple sources for information and analysis, each with strengths and weaknesses. Instead of defaulting to Google.

Sure, it’s true that some of the LLMs, like ChatGPT, are far too reliant on single sources. Such as Wikipedia. But even that’s changing, driven by the LLM competition. Elon Musk’s Grok recently launched Grokipedia. Pretty rough now, but it will get better.

Plus we’ve got a full plate of LLMs with real user bases. Perplexity for research, Claude for coding and no doubt more custom LLMs coming soon to disrupt every disruptible field in the US and the world. Which is just about everything in professional services, the arts and information technology.

What does this mean for your brand’s or business’ efforts to optimize for AI discovery, reputation and ultimately brand awareness and sales?

First, it means that silos are over. Google’s total dominance of search and keywords is over. Meta’s dominance of digital product advertising is next. As the Chatbots play a bigger and bigger role in recommendations and discovery.

Second, it means you need to coordinate much more effectively across all your channels to succeed in a world where no channel dominates.

Turn into our final law to learn how to make it happen.