Cue the Music

Earlier this week, Apple services boss Eddy Cue took the stand in federal court and dropped a quiet bombshell: for the first time ever, the use of search in Apple’s Safari browser fell over the last two months.

Cue pointed the finger at artificial intelligence. In his testimony during the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against Google, Cue said he believes A.I. powered search engines will eventually replace traditional search tools like Google—and that Apple is “actively looking at” revamping Safari around A.I.-powered search interfaces. The implication was clear: the tectonic plates under the internet are shifting, and Google’s empire may be starting to crack.

Google, of course, disputed this. In an unusual public statement published on its website, the search juggernaut insisted it continues to see “overall query growth in Search,” including on Apple’s platforms, signaling it firmly remains the central gateway to the web.

But Google’s own behavior tells another story. It recently launched an “A.I. mode” in its search experience, prominently placed A.I.-generated results at the top of its search pages, is aggressively pushing its Gemini chatbot, and is scrambling to keep up with a world that’s suddenly interested in getting answers, not blue links. The defensive posture alone is telling: for perhaps the first time in two decades, Google is facing serious competition.

And not just from OpenAI. Meta, Perplexity, and a host of scrappy startups are offering A.I. tools that attempt to replicate what Google used to—help you find information—only faster, more conversationally, and often without a single click. If users are finding what they need without ever seeing a list of blue links, the downstream effects will be enormous.

One group sure to be watching nervously: news publishers.

For years, publishers have lived and died by the algorithmic whims of Facebook, Google and the ever-shifting social media flavor of the week. Search traffic is the lifeblood of many outlets, propping up digital advertising revenues and underwriting the entire information economy. If Google’s dominance begins to fade—and with it, the referral traffic it drives to media sites—the consequences for journalism could be catastrophic.

Cue’s courtroom comments should sound alarm bells. If Apple is seeing search drop in Safari and is now exploring how to make A.I.-first browsing a native experience, then we may be heading for a post-search web—one where content is not surfaced by keywords and ranking formulas, but synthesized and summarized by machines. In that world, publishers risk becoming invisible and their revenue models fundamentally disrupted.

Meanwhile, the DOJ’s case against Google is barreling ahead with potentially massive implications. Regulators want to break up Google’s ad business, unbundle Chrome from its search engine, and claw back the entrenched advantages that have made Google the default on every device. But even if the government succeeds, it may be the technological shift—not the legal one—that ultimately upends the industry.

The internet we’ve known for the past 20 years—built around search engines, keywords, and clicks—is being rewritten in real-time. What replaces it is still uncertain. A.I. may be more efficient at providing answers, but it’s also more opaque, raising serious questions about accuracy, bias, and manipulation—especially in an era of culture wars and deep political divides.

For publishers, the challenge will be to adapt faster than they did during the last platform revolution. That means rethinking distribution models and putting more focus on building direct relationships with readers, before the bots take over the front door to the internet.

Cue’s revelation may not just signal the end of an era for Google. It may be the start of a new one for everyone else.