Google may not be such a hard habit to break after all. A senior Apple executive said Wednesday that Google searches over the Safari web browser fell over the last two months. “That has not happened in over 20 years,” Eddie Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said on the witness stand during the penalty trial phase of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google. Cue attributed the drop to a growing number of people using generative AI services such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. It was a costly revelation. Google-parent Alphabet saw its share price tumble more than 7% Wednesday after news outlets reported the comments. That cost Alphabet about $250 billion in market cap. Apple’s shares also fell more than 1% by the close, as Google’s traffic over Safari powers a lucrative partnership that now generates more than $20 billion in annual payments to the iPhone maker. But for Google, the latest comments only serve to thicken the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the company after losing not one but two federal antitrust cases over the last nine months. Both cases are seeking to break the company up in some fashion, under the basic argument that Google dominates the internet search business in such a way that even deep-pocketed challengers like Microsoft have little chance of breaking in. Google powered 89.7% of the world’s internet searches last month, according to data from Statcounter. Microsoft’s Bing was next up, with a 3.9% share.

Full commentary : Drop in search traffic is a reminder technological advancement can displace long-established tech giants.