June 2025
Case
HBS Case Collection

AI Wars in 2025

By: Andy Wu and Anna Yang

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:29

Abstract

In June 2025, Google leaders in Mountain View, CA convened after its parent company Alphabet shed a quarter-trillion in market capitalization in a matter of months. The immediate spark—the quiet revelation that Google searches had dipped for the first time in 20 years—masked a deeper shift: hundreds of millions were now turning first to generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and upstart DeepSeek, asking questions that once flowed automatically to Google Search. After two decades of dominating search, Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information” was now in peril. The company now faced a future in which the world’s queries might bypass it altogether.