The online search landscape has undergone significant transformation in 2024, shaped by advancements in AI technologies, increased competition, and heightened regulatory scrutiny. The rise of powerful generative AI tools is reshaping how we find information online, which is increasingly mediated by algorithms fine-tuned to deliver highly relevant results, predictive recommendations, and interactive responses to complex queries. This article offers a glimpse into what to expect in the search engine landscape in 2025.
Google will try to maintain their hegemony in online search
Google remains the most-used search engine despite a challenging 2024. In August, Google lost a landmark US antitrust case over its search dominance, where a federal judge labelled Google a “monopolist”. Prosecutors argued that Google paid over USD $26 billion to network carriers, browser developers and mobile phone manufacturers for anti-competitive deals.
As a result of the ruling, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering “behavioural and structural remedies”, potentially requiring Google to divest parts of its business, such as Google Chrome, Android, and ending agreements that make it the default search engine on devices like the iPhone. US President-elect, Donald Trump, is expected to attempt to block any breakup.
Challengers aim to capture market share
Other search engines are gaining traction by partnering with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Google Gemini’s direct competitor. ChatGPT uses Bing index to find content, and while the newly released ChatGPT Search uses its own algorithm, it still relies heavily on Bing. Microsoft has also gained some ground by further integrating Microsoft Copilot (largely powered by ChatGPT) into Bing.
Privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo keep attracting users concerned with data security and privacy. Earlier this year, DuckDuckGo released a platform that allowed its users to interact with a number of AI models while ensuring user data remains secure. DuckDuckGo and its chatbot providers cannot use user data to train their models – this includes metadata and server or IP addresses, to ensure all queries appear to originate from the company itself rather than individual users. For privacy-conscious users, ChatGPT also introduced a “temporary chat” feature for free and paid users that will not store data, akin to browsing the internet in incognito mode.
These advances and partnerships between major AI providers and competitor search engines have started eating away at Google’s search market share, which has decreased from 91.47% at the beginning of 2024 to 89.34%. Bing and Yandex have made the most significant gains.
Increased AI regulation is on the horizon
The mass adoption of generative AI tools is drawing increased regulatory scrutiny, especially in areas like misinformation and deepfakes, bias, and accountability. On 1st August 2024, the European Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) took effect to foster responsible artificial intelligence development and deployment in the EU. Other jurisdictions have followed suit, with the UK signing the first international treaty with the Council of Europe to address AI’s potential risks to human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In 2025, we anticipate further legislation to address these risks and enhance user privacy.
The future is long term
AI’s impact in the search landscape shows no signs of slowing down, as the biggest players ramp up efforts for the long term. In October 2024, Google announced a long-term energy agreement with Kairos Power, which will build several small nuclear reactors to support Google’s AI ambitions. Microsoft and Amazon have reached similar agreements to power their own initiatives.
How users react to the introduction of more AI-powered elements on internet services will be key for further development. Search may evolve into a hybrid model where users begin with AI tools for exploration and turn to traditional search engines for verification. In any case, AI is here to stay.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email webrequests@digitalis.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to webrequests@digitalis.com