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The verb \u201cGoogle\u201d refers to the action of looking something up on the eponymous search engine\u2014and it made its pop culture debut<\/a> in 2002 during the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer <\/em>when Xander, a goofball 21-year-old, mistakes tech geek Willow\u2019s research suggestion (\u201cHave you Googled her yet?\u201d) to slayer Buffy as an innuendo.<\/p>\n Since then, Googling has come a long way from being a punch line in a supernatural teen drama. Google co-founder Larry Page first coined<\/a> the verb two months before the company\u2019s founding, when he updated friends on the company in an email and signed off with \u201cHave fun and keep googling!\u201d The term was minted in the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2006, and since then, the neologism has become synonymous with using a search engine. But not anymore. Today\u2019s teens are seldom<\/a> using Google as a verb, according to Bernstein Research, and it\u2019s a sign they\u2019ve fundamentally changed how they interact with the internet.<\/p>\n \u201cYounger audiences are \u2018searching\u2019, not \u2018Googling\u2019,\u201d Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik and colleagues said in a note published Friday. \u201cAnd they increasingly head to social media like TikTok for restaurant recommendations, directly to scaled aggregators like Amazon<\/a> for retail, and Generative AI search like ChatGPT to get their homework done.\u201d<\/p>\n Bernstein, using an April 2024 survey by Forbes Advisor and Talker Research of 2,000 Americans, noted that 45% of Gen Z are more likely to use \u201csocial searching\u201d on sites like TikTok and Instagram<\/a> instead of Google. That\u2019s compared to about 35% of millennials, 20% of Gen X, and less than 10% of Boomers. Even as Gen Z grows older, they\u2019ve increasingly relied on social media as their primary search engine.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGen Zers have also grown up in a relatively mature Internet,\u201d Shmulik said in the note. \u201cIt\u2019s second nature for these users to go direct to the source\u2026This world isn\u2019t big and scary, it\u2019s just home for Gen Z.\u201d<\/p>\n For the young generation, social media platforms have become a way to look up what to buy, where to eat, and how to spend their time. About 40% of Gen Z said they used social media as a primary search engine for brands, products and services in 2016, and almost 52% said the same in 2023, according to data from GWI Core.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Social media sites like Instagram and TikTok have responded to Gen Z\u2019s prolific searching for things to buy online with their own e-commerce platforms and tailored ads, making $11 billion<\/a> in U.S. ad revenue from minors alone in 2023. Even more mouth watering is Gen Z\u2019s spending power, predicted to swell to $12 trillion by 2023, according to NielsonIQ\u2019s \u201cSpend Z\u201d report<\/a>. Gen Alpha, the iPad kid generation, is hot on their heels, already spending over two hours a week<\/a> online shopping.<\/p>\n But while social media sites have begun to capitalize on Gen Z\u2019s proclivity for scrolling and searching, Google has another problem with which to contend.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething like almost 40% of young people, when they\u2019re looking for a place for lunch, they don\u2019t go to Google Maps or Search,\u201d Prabhakar Raghavan, a Google senior vice president, said during Fortune<\/em>\u2019s 2022 Brainstorm Tech conference<\/a>, referencing internal company data. \u201cThey go to TikTok or Instagram.\u201d<\/p>\n Google\u2019s search engine woes are compounded by its recent antitrust lawsuit loss<\/a> in which a federal judge ruled the tech giant monopolized the search market. Google\u2019s parent company Alphabet paid $26 billion to be the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers, effectively preventing competing search engines from succeeding in the market.<\/p>\n As far as Gen Z is concerned, Google has already made changes, given that young people are attracted to pictures and videos, which contrast heavily with older generations\u2019 search habits of looking up key phrases and clicking a link that best corresponds with those terms.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cThe journey begins in different forms than before: visual image forms,\u201d Raghavan said.<\/p>\n Google has since invested in technology to address this, including augmented reality glasses<\/a> with \u201cmulti search\u201d features allowing users to use both images and text to search online, and includes a \u201cnear me\u201d feature to find products, stores, and services local to users. The company is testing an Ask Photos<\/a> feature that uses its Gemini AI models to answer questions about information in a user\u2019s photo, like the restaurant at which they ate or last time they visited a particular location.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to conjure up completely new expectations and that takes altogether new\u2026technology underpinnings,\u201d Raghavan said.<\/p>\n Google did not immediately respond to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGoogle is sooo last decade<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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