But wouldn't Google, even without search ads (which are only up +4% YOY to $40 bn), still be a hundred of billions behemoth? Sure it wouldn't have a 1.3 trillion cap without search ads but Google is also Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Workspace / Google Suite (which, what, 7 millions of SMEs are using), cloud services, etc.
I don't see Google "crashing completely" anytime soon.
On top of that there is definitely a pay-to-play tier if you are a huge advertiser. You'll find many of the big boys double and triple serving ads under small sub brands, which is against Google policy. You can report it and Google just ignores you.
How about those pages that are just lists of more syndicated Google search ads? Clearly a "bridge page" which is a policy violation but it's some bigger spender behind it.
It's definitely opening a window of opportunity for a competitor, but that doesn't guarantee anyone's success (or failure).
Google is so big and diverse it's easy to forget all its major bits.
That's not remotely realistic. It's much more likely to look like what's happened to IBM since the rise of personal computing: its special "no one ever got fired for buying it" status goes away, and while it may linger as a company that still provides a product and/or service to other companies (those it's managed to make itself indispensable to), it may shrink, and its popular image fade, for a number of years. Given the differences in Google's portfolio vs IBM's, I'd say there is more of a chance that Google would eventually collapse down to nothing, or nearly so, but it would still take a good while for that to happen.
The fundamentals haven’t changed since then. Google pays Apple a reported $18B+ a year to be the default search engine on iOS devices.
GCP is losing money, Google WorkSpace /GSuite has little penetration in the market compared to MS Office.
YouTube's decline will look more like an unbundling than a 1:1 replacement.