Published on: April 19, 2025 / update from: April 19, 2025 - Author: Konrad Wolfenstein
Semantic search engine vs. AI search: market shares in a sink flight | Google's dominance crumbles | The alternative booms - picture: xpert.digital
Turning point in the search engine market: AI-based solutions on the advance
Ki vs. Google: The battle for the future of the search has started
In April 2025 there is a remarkable development in the search engine market. Google continues to dominate, but the search engine giant is slowly losing market shares, while traditional competitors such as Bing and new AI-supported search engines are gaining ground. This shift marks a historic turning point in the digital search landscape, since Google's market share has been fell under the 90 percent mark for the first time in a decade.
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The search engine market in Germany
In Germany, Google remains the undisputed market leader, but shows the first signs of decreasing dominance. With the mobile search, Google's position with around 94 percent market share in March 2025 is still largely unchallenged. In the case of desktop searches, on the other hand, Google has significantly lost ground and only reaches about 74 percent, while Bing was able to win shares.
The current distribution in the German search market shows the following picture:
Desktop search in Germany
- Google: 74% (with a tendency down)
- Bing: in growth
- Other providers (Ecosia, Duckduckgo, Yahoo): With lower market shares
Mobile search in Germany
- Google: 94% (stable at a high level)
- Other providers share the remaining 6%
Ecosia has established itself as the third most popular search engine in Germany with a market share of 1.12%, which reflects the growing environmental awareness of German users.
The global search engine market
A similar, albeit a more differentiated picture worldwide. Google still dominates, but is slowly losing market shares.
Desktop search worldwide:
- Google: 79.1% (March 2025)
- Bing: 12%
- Yahoo: 3%
- Other: under 1% each
Mobile search worldwide
- Google: 94%
- Yandex: 2.9%
- Other providers with low proportions
It is particularly noteworthy that Google's worldwide market share fell below the 90 percent mark at the end of 2024-an event that was last observed ten years ago. In the last quarter of 2024, the share dropped to 89.34% (October), 89.99% (November) and 89.73% (December). These numbers indicate a continued trend, not to a temporary fluctuation.
Special case China
The Chinese search engine market differs significantly from the global pattern. Here, Bing is a leading market share of 48.8% in the desktop search, followed by Baidu with 31%. In the case of mobile searches, the relationship turns around: Baidu dominates with a 67% market share. Google plays practically no role in China with only 1.6% market share - a drastic contrast to its global dominance.
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The rise of the AI search engines
One of the most exciting developments in the 2025 search engine market is the rise of AI-based search engines that begin to revolutionize the traditional search.
Perplexity
The AI search engine Perplexity has strong growth and now processes around 25 million daily user inquiries. In 2024, the company had already recorded 250 million inquiries in a single month. Although the market share in Germany is still low with 0.0199% (December 2024), the growth rate of 71% per month shows the enormous potential.
Chatgpt/Searchgpt (Openai)
Chatgpt as a search alternative is also becoming more important. With a monthly growth of 44% and impressive 150% in Searchgpt, according to experts, the platform could reach a market share of 1% by the end of 2025. In Germany, the traffic proportion in December 2024 was 0.0712%-small, but with rapid growth.
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Reasons for the market shift
Several factors contribute to the current dynamics in the search engine market:
- AI integration: The increasing integration of AI technologies in traditional search engines and the emergence of specialized AI search engines change the usage habits.
- Changed user behavior: Users are increasingly looking for personalized, direct answers instead of a list of links, which plays in the hands of AI-based approaches.
- Aspecialization: Search engines such as Duckduckgo (data protection) or Ecosia (environmental protection) attract specific user groups that are willing to change from Google.
- Google Ai Overview: Google's own integration of AI into the search results could paradoxically lead to a decline in traditional searches, since users receive direct answers without clicking on further links.
The future of the search engine market
The development of the 2025 search engine market indicates a fundamental change. While Google will keep its dominance for the time being, the decades of undisputed market leader seems to face serious competition for the first time.
A race is particularly emerging in the area of AI-supported search. Perplexity is aiming for 100 million daily inquiries by the end of the year, while Searchgpt from Openai increases even faster with a monthly growth of 150%.
The integration of AI in the search will not only move the market shares further, but also the way we find and consume information. The trend goes away from the classic link -based search to direct, context -related answers and assistant -like functions.
Google reacts to this challenge with the increased integration of one's own AI solutions such as “AI Overviews” and the experimental “AI Mode”. Whether this is sufficient to stop the erosion of the market shares remains one of the most exciting questions for the future of the digital information market.
AI-driven diversification: the end of the search engine monoculture?
The 2025 search engine market is located in a historical upheaval phase. Google's dominance is slowly crumbling, while established competitors such as Bing as well as new AI-based search engines such as perplexity and searchive. This trend is particularly evident in Germany due to the slow diversification of the market, even if Google is still clearly in the mobile area and around three quarters in the desktop segment.
Artificial intelligence proves to be the decisive catalytic converter of this development and will continue to transform the search engine market in the coming years - possibly faster than many experts would have considered it possible recently.
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