Google CEO Sundar Pichai Insists 'Overall Query Growth' Persists Shrugging Off Eddy Cue's Warning, Calls Search 'Far From Zero-Sum Game'

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai pushed back on claims that artificial-intelligence tools are eroding the company's search engine.

What Happened: Pichai told The Verge's Nilay Patel that "we're seeing overall query growth in search" even on Apple devices despite rival assertions to the contrary.

Apple services boss Eddy Cue testified this month that Google queries inside Safari slipped for the first time in 22 years, a remark that wiped roughly $160 billion off Alphabet's market cap in a single session. Asked whether that slide is real, Pichai replied, "No… everything we see tells us that we are seeing query growth, including across Apple's devices and platforms."

He added that temporary noise in the numbers "doesn't change the fact that the query growth is continuing to grow over time."

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Cue's courtroom stat landed amid a U.S. antitrust trial that scrutinizes Google's estimated $20 billion-a-year deal to remain Safari's default engine. A recent MarketBeat analysis warned that "AI services… are reshaping how people search for information," stoking questions about Google's long-term moat.

Why It Matters: Pichai countered with fresh data from last week's Google I/O keynote stating AI overviews now reach 1.5 billion users in 200 countries and are driving "over 10 percent growth" in the kinds of queries that trigger them in big markets such as the United States and India. A separate company blog post said people who receive the AI summaries "search more often," reinforcing the case that generative answers expand, rather than cannibalize, demand.

Pichai's message is that search is not a zero-sum game. "People are engaging more, doing more with it. We are improving our products," he told The Verge, comparing today's AI shift to YouTube's growth after TikTok arrived. Whether investors buy that optimism may depend on how fast AI Overviews and the competition reshape the web's most lucrative on-ramp.

Image via Shutterstock

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