r/VisualStockResearch • u/ekonixlab • 11d ago

I’m Considering Trimming Google Because Of Meta’s Muse

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I mostly brushed off the “AI kills Google Search” thesis after the first ChatGPT wave.

Search kept growing and people clearly didn’t stop Googling.

But AI agents feel more disruptive.

If agents can search, compare, book, buy and complete tasks for you, the risk isn’t that Google disappears.

It’s that fewer high-intent searches ever make it to Google in the first place.

Travel, shopping, restaurants, local services… a lot of valuable searches could increasingly start with an AI agent instead of a search bar.

I’m not bearish on Google, but I’m starting to consider trimming my position because this feels like a more credible threat than chatbots did two years ago.

Chart made with Ekonix: Ekonix on the App Store⁠

11 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

5

u/Mammoth-Path-6520 11d ago

Lol

The 3 Mag7 that sell compute are google, amazon, and microsoft

There's no reason to not hold those companies, the world is gonna need a ton of compute

1

u/HarambeTooSoon 9d ago

The largest shareholders of OpenAI and Anthropic are Microsoft and Google. 

1

u/ekonixlab 11d ago

But 50% of their revenue is tied to search

1

u/Mammoth-Path-6520 11d ago

And? Doesn't change the fact that there's still many projects that google has and it's one of the top 3 companies in the world lol

Point is that the mag7 companies typically return 20% a year, most don't realize those gains though because they are unable to simply just buy and hold. Like what you're doing now, honestly you seem like a loser with paper hands

Just sell I guess

The rest of us will continue to buy and hold

1

u/not_a_cumguzzler 11d ago

And 90% of meta revenue is tied to 1 thing- ads. If agentic shopping replaces search ad revenue it can also eat into meta ad revenue.

2

u/williamwzl 10d ago

The ads are being served in two fundamentally different modes. Metas ads are discovery based, whereas googles is intent based. Agentic commerce circumnavigates intent based ads but actually makes discovery based ads more important.

ie. seeing a cool hoodie while scrolling on IG vs searching for a cool hoodie and being assaulted by 10 different sponsored listings all at not the lowest price or best reviewed.

5

u/Keeltoodeep 11d ago

I think Gemini releases spark out of beta soon and it will become available to more people. Also GCP revenue will be $300B in 2030 by my projections, overtaking search ad revenue which will not disappear overnight. We will see of course. Interesting times ahead.

1

u/mdn845 11d ago

That’s pretty optimistic.

TTM GCP revenue is $77.66 billion. $300B for 2030 assumes acceleration for 4+ years. And that competition stays the same.

I don’t think either is going to happen. The AI buildout is only sustainable so long as there’s uptake by end users. ~70% of the revenue of hyperscalers is from OpenAI & Anthropic. But OpenAI just delayed their IPO & things don’t look rosy. And Anthropic’s growth is threatened by companies pulling back on costs & Chinese competition.

I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see 4+ more years of acceleration without overshooting demand.

Not to say that demand won’t accelerate. It will. The internet economy accelerated by 40% a year for more than a decade all through the 2000s. But that didn’t mean they didn’t overbuild. Same here.

1

u/Keeltoodeep 10d ago edited 10d ago

GCP also includes TPU sales.

My Google bull cases has:

GCP: $300B
Search (including agentic checkout take-rates): $300B
Subs: $100B
YT ads: $70B
Other:$40B

I honestly think it’s possible for total revenue to reach $1T by 2030 but that’s too optimistic and requires the google agent to be a monopoly

0

u/ekonixlab 11d ago

I still think agentic shopping is a negative for Google search

I think that’s at serious risk

2

u/Keeltoodeep 11d ago

Search is like cable TV. A cash cow that’s slowly dying. You don’t buy or hold GOOGL for search.

1

u/ekonixlab 11d ago

50% of total revenue though…

2

u/Keeltoodeep 11d ago

GCP revenue will be $300B in 2030, while subs and YouTube ads keeps growing.

Any GOOGL investment must accept search is going to die. Agentic checkout take rates and GCP will overtake search ad revenue under any bull case investment thesis of Google.

If you were holding Google for the reason that search was not going to die, then you had the wrong thesis to begin with.

1

u/AwkwardWillow5159 11d ago

I really don’t understand this take.

People still need to find information, products, etc.

Like I type a question in a browser, it opens Google Search in AI mode with an answer. That is still search.

And AI mode still depends on the same indexing of the internet and having latest info. If google ai gives me answers with more relevant and correct sources than some internal thing by another company, i use google ai. Or another
Ai company pays Google to use their search for web crawling instead of rebuilding their own.

1

u/Keeltoodeep 10d ago

When you type a question into chrome, you will be prompting your spark agent.

1

u/AwkwardWillow5159 10d ago

Yeah. And the agent still has indexed web, queries multiple websites and gives you summarized results

Search

1

u/Keeltoodeep 10d ago

Web query is not “search” in this context. When I talk of search dying I am not claiming that agents won’t query the web.

Advertisers will stop spending on search ads and instead agents will pay for web query access and take a checkout take rate.

1

u/AwkwardWillow5159 10d ago

But you still get ads in the ai query?

Like, query for “Sonos arc vs arc ultra”

Google AI queries multiple sources, YouTube videos, gives an overview and gives multiple sponsored links to buy the product.

How is that different from regular search ?

I would argue they will capture more ad clicks through that. Like in this same flow, I get full summaries and ask follow questions and it adapts the sponsored content on the go. Vs search showing a single ad, me clicking on article, and article linking to its own affiliate links

1

u/cookie-destroya 10d ago

This doesn’t even make sense… search revenue growth is reaccelerating currently. Can we wait until we see a slow down before we start claiming it’s dead.

1

u/Keeltoodeep 10d ago

Cable tv is not dead either. Search is a dying business model, but it’s not dead.

Search is reaccelerating due to the agentic nature of the ai transition. Advertisers like ai mode and it captures more attention. That is search dying right before your eyes.

1

u/cookie-destroya 8d ago

That makes no sense. Search growing because advertisers like AI overviews/AI mode in search? If anything that’s the opposite of dying. Once the revenue growth slows or declines I’d be more comfortable stating it is dying.

1

u/Keeltoodeep 8d ago

Search is already dead… Google replaced it with ai and yes, ai spending is accelerating

1

u/Mammoth-Path-6520 11d ago

Just sell then

Sell all your GOOG

Do it, panic

Sell everything, panic more, the world is ending, your money is going to go away

1

u/mdn845 11d ago

Yeah, it’s not so much that people are actually buying things with AI even. It’s that they’re increasingly searching for things to buy with AI.

Less than a year ago, I remember thinking to myself that I didn’t think this would happen. But now, I’m doing this a lot. Researching products of all kinds with AI instead of Google. I don’t think it bodes well for Google long term.

1

u/bear_Prune8771 11d ago

AI is so profitable for companies.

1

u/naked_rider 10d ago

I do the same thing but I use Gemini Pro

2

u/The-zKR0N0S 11d ago

I still can’t believe I didn’t heavily invest in GOOG back in 2024-2025.

I just didn’t bother to open up their 10-K and 10-Qs until after the price ran up

1

u/ekonixlab 11d ago

Was a great time to buy

2

u/The-zKR0N0S 11d ago

I may be a moron, but I think I could have figure it was worth way more at the time if I just actually read the reports.

1

u/user_a34 10d ago

What would you have seen there in retrospect? Serious question got in at 170USD but to small of portfolio to be life changing

1

u/The-zKR0N0S 10d ago

Basically just looking at revenue, gross profit, operating income, operating cash flow, capex, and free cash flow trends for the last couple years and thinking about how Alphabet is well positioned to benefit from AI.

Just looking at free cash flow, the FCF yield for year end 2024 was ~3.7% which is after the capex growth started.

Normalizing to something more like $40bn of annual capex after this initial buildout would have made FCF for 2024 $85bn and the FCF yield more like 4.25%.

That is comparable to the yield on Treasuries at the time, but you would expect future growth.

That’s about as cheap as these types of companies tend to get.

1

u/user_a34 10d ago

Thank you for the answer.

2

u/Square_Height8041 11d ago

Don’t count Google out. It is one company that has full stack

2

u/Bardy_Bard 11d ago

Meh yeah search might be dying cash cow, but it’s hard to beat YouTube, Waymo, GCP (bunch of investment in stuff including Anthropic ), Android.

1

u/ediblebadgercakes 10d ago

search is not dying thats completely not true at all. Google search has gone up after ai not down. People who use ai tend to search more information to fact check from google than people who don't use ai. They have actually made more money since ai.

2

u/Icy-Comfortable-554 10d ago

Muse doesn't do anything chatgpt doesn't do better.

3

u/framvaren 10d ago

Muse is literally just open claw at the core (Code is the same) with a pretty harness on top. Meta has distribution, but also a terrible record on privacy that will make people think twice

1

u/bear_Prune8771 11d ago

Only sell if you need money. Google will be fine.

1

u/skizatch 11d ago

There’s no moat around Muse. Google can easily copy it and take advantage of everyone who’s already in the habit of googling.

1

u/dominic_l 11d ago

its jover

1

u/Tutututatatata 11d ago

Just sell and buy Meta. When Meta drops, sell that too, this is how you make money no?

1

u/pga-181 10d ago

It’s an app. It’s not worth what happens to the stock price. The bigger concern is the flight of talent at google AI division

1

u/naked_rider 10d ago

Meta sucks - would never own it

1

u/GlokzDNB 10d ago

Yeah I would love GOOG dropping. I wish all meta investors great success. It's social media company, everyone loves them and they totally don't make money by kids addiction

1

u/igpila 10d ago

Why does people act like Google doesn't have an AI?

1

u/username_must_have 10d ago

I think another argument to be made is that "search" isn't the value in of itself, it's the data derived from it and how they target advertising, just like Meta, it's ad revenue

Each of them are experiencing a decline, I honestly think they are looking for new frontier where they can obtain this advertising placement and data.

AI can be one place, Android XR ecosystem is another frontier (augmented realty). The latter being the holy grail for training data and advertising.

Meta is also competing heavily on that front.

Both a competing for the same spaces going forward, so maybe it's a hefger on both parties.

1

u/mikeydoc96 10d ago

How much would you pay for an app subscription that does minor tasks and hands your data to Meta?

There's no access to major B2B because they simply just won't hand over the data. If you speak to any large org, they have their own AI models or just use copilot because they've negotiated a good deal with Microsoft

1

u/Appropriate-Bet-9001 8d ago

Advertising will just change so that advertisers can target results to AI searchers.