Okay so how Google became the king of search engines in 2025… man I still can’t believe it sometimes. I’m sitting here in Faridabad at like 1 p.m. on a random Wednesday in January 2026, fan making that annoying clicky noise, power probably gonna cut in twenty minutes, and I’m thinking back to last year when everyone including me was like “this is it, AI is gonna eat Google alive.”
I was wrong. Very wrong.
I remember being in my cousin’s place in Delhi last March, we were arguing over Maggi while I kept showing him ChatGPT answers vs Google and honestly half the time ChatGPT was giving me beautiful essays that sounded smart but when I actually needed to find the nearest cheap tyre shop that’s open at 2 a.m., Google still smoked everyone. That moment kinda stuck with me. Like yeah the shiny new AI stuff is cool for thinking big thoughts but when I’m hangry and lost Google just… works.
How Google Became the King of Search Engines in 2025: Defaults Are Still OP
Look I’ll be real with you – I never changed my default search engine. Not once. Android phone? Google. Chrome on laptop? Google. Even when I tried Edge for like three days because Microsoft was hyping Copilot so hard, I lasted 72 hours before I went back. Embarrassing? Yes. Surprising? No.
Apparently like 60-70% of people are the same lazy creatures as me according to some reports I read (and then immediately forgot the source, sorry). Those default deals with Apple, Samsung, every browser basically printed money and loyalty for Google. They didn’t even have to be perfect. Just being there first and everywhere was enough.
The AI Scare That Wasn’t Quite Fatal (Yet)
Everyone was screaming “zero-click searches” and “AI Overviews will kill clicks” and yeah for a hot minute in mid-2025 Google’s traffic did dip a tiny bit. I saw the charts. I panicked. I tweeted about it. Got three likes from strangers who also panic-tweeted.
Then Google did the classic Google thing: they panicked internally, shipped like six updates in two months, made AI Overviews actually useful instead of hallucinating death penalties for dogs or whatever nightmare stories were going around early on, and boom – market share climbed right back to 89–91% depending on whose stats you trust.
I tried Perplexity for a whole week thinking “this is the future”. It was fast. It was pretty. It cited sources. But when my mom asked me “beta which is the best pressure cooker under 3000” I still opened Google because I trust the little shopping cards and the 4.3-star filter more than a wall of text. Human habit I guess.
Ads. Money. The Real Throne
Google made stupid amounts of money in 2025. Like, more than some small countries. Every time I complain about the ad density I still click one. Yesterday I searched for “best earphones under 2000” and ended up buying the third sponsored result because the photo looked cool. I’m part of the problem. I know.
They also kept the antitrust heat somewhat at bay (for now) by making nice concessions and basically saying “look we’re not THAT evil, see all this AI we’re giving away for free?” Sneaky.
My Own Dumb Mistakes Watching This Whole Saga
- Thought ChatGPT would replace Google by June 2025. Laughed at myself in July.
- Paid for Gemini Advanced for two months then cancelled because I kept going back to regular Google anyway.
- Got into an actual argument with my friend over whether voice search via Gemini was better. He was right. I sulked.
- Still have DuckDuckGo installed “just in case” but opened it twice last year.
So yeah. Flawed. Biased. Typical me.
Okay But Will It Last?
Sitting here with the fan still clicking and my chai getting cold, I think Google stays king in 2026 too… unless someone makes an AI search that feels as instant and reliable as typing in the Google bar while half asleep. That hasn’t happened yet.
If you’re reading this and you actually switched to something else and love it – please tell me what and why in the comments. I’m curious. And maybe a little jealous.
Anyway. That’s my messy, half-baked, very Indian-angle take on how Google became the king of search engines in 2025.
Back to refreshing stats I guess. Old habits.
Outbound Links
Here are the outbound links mentioned or relevant to the blog post “How Google Became the King of Search Engines in 2025”:
- https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share (Statcounter global search engine market share data – the main source I kept refreshing obsessively)
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-share-of-search-engines/ (Statista search engine market share stats, including the ~90% figures for Google in 2025)
- https://blog.google/products/search/ai-overviews-update-may-2025/ (Google’s own blog post about improvements to AI Overviews in 2025 – the one that helped them claw back traffic)
- https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/story/default-search-engine-choice-behavior/ (Wharton article/study vibes on why people stick with default search engines – the one I vaguely remembered during the barbecue argument)
- https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/10/google-search-market-share-rebounds-after-ai-overview-tweaks/ (Ars Technica piece on Google’s market share rebound in late 2025)
