Apple says searches are shrinking because people are using AI instead. Now Google's stock is tanking.

• Google has been worrying about losing search share to AI engines like ChatGPT for a couple of years.
• It looks like that's started to happen, an Apple executive testified in court.
• Google shares immediately fell.

Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, investors have wondered about the implications for Google. Mainly: What happens to the company if lots of people start using AI engines to answer questions instead of Google's dominant search engine?

Now it looks like that might actually be happening.

Eddy Cue, an Apple executive, said searches on Apple's Safari browser shrank for the first time ever in April — a change he chalked up to people using AI instead.

Cue made that disclosure on Wednesday while testifying in the federal antitrust suit against Google's parent company, Alphabet, because Apple receives more than $20 billion a year from Google to make it the default search engine on Apple devices.

He also said Apple would likely add AI engines as search alternatives on its devices over time, Bloomberg reports:

[Cue] noted that searches on Safari dipped for the first time last month, which he attributed to people using AI.

Cue said he believes that AI search providers, including OpenAI, Perplexity AI Inc. and Anthropic PBC, will eventually replace standard search engines like Google. He said he believes Apple will add those players as options in Safari in the future.

"We will add them to the list — they probably won't be the default," he said, adding that they still need to improve.

Cue's testimony neatly explains a major reason that investors have been pouring money into AI companies like OpenAI at increasingly huge valuations: They're hoping that at a minimum, they'll be able to carve out some of Google's ownership of the stock market — the primary reason Google is worth $2 trillion today.

That prospect is also what has prompted Google to turn itself into an AI company, by turning conventional searches into queries it answers with its Gemini AI engine. Early stumbles in those efforts generated a lot of mockery — see glue pizza — but Google has stuck with it, insisting that users like the results.

On the company's earnings call last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said its efforts were working and that its AI engine had helped increase search volume: "Nearly a year after we launched AI Overviews in the US, we continue to see that usage growth is increasing as people learn that Search is more useful for more of their queries," he told analysts.

Cue's testimony suggests that those efforts haven't been enough to protect Google's market. Google shares fell more than 7% on Wednesday.

Google released a statement late Wednesday disputing Cue's assertion and saying it continues to see "overall query growth in search."

"That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms," the statement said.