Google search is still all that, even in the age of artificial intelligence chatbots. After Argentina pulled off a win against Egypt in a World Cup game this week, the go-to search engine “broke all prior usage records” according to an X post from Nick Fox, senior vice president of Knowledge & Information at Google.
Fox said that Google saw “its highest usage in history right after Argentina scored their winning goal in yesterday’s match!” in the Wednesday post. He added that he can’t wait for the “semis and final” of the global soccer tournament held this summer in North America.
According to CNBC, a Google spokesperson confirmed that the company saw “saw the most queries per second happen right after the winning goal” but did not share specific numbers. It did reveal that the top searched query was “argentina vs egypt,” and that other popular searches included “argentina x colombia” and “how many world cup goals does messi have,” referring to Argentina’s star forward Lionel Messi.
CNBC also noted that this record-breaking milestone also comes “as the company tries to prove its traditional search engine can keep its relevance in the age of AI, where chatbots have become more prevalent.” For years, Google beat out other search engines like AskJeeves and Bing. Today Google search can still provide things that AI can’t and, per CNBC the company still controls 90% of the search market.
In a June 3 blog post, Google parent company Alphabet said that revenue in search grew by 19% year-over-year in the previous quarter. It also said that its AI search features were driving user engagement. AI Overviews, one of those features, now has 2.5 billion users each month. CNBC also noted that Google’s stock price has more than doubled in the past year and that its revenue growth in the first quarter was the fastest for any period since 2022.
