Another tech giant took it on the chin last week and not just any bellwether of old, but the mighty Google. Down 38% from its highs, it now sits at a rather precarious position in the charts. A break of the nearby trend line that has been twenty years in the making, could herald further significant losses.
Before we write off the King however, we must first bow in all humility to his, her and its utter supremacy. For those of us who are old enough to remember, there once was a time when AOL and Yahoo ruled the earth. But then sometime after 2000, within just two years of its founding, Google completely took over.
Controlling almost 90% of the global search market, if you want your website and products to get noticed, there is only one place to go. With global advertising revenues exceeding $500 billion a year, there is a reason the company whose stock they call Alphabet is the fourth most valuable in the world.
Then came a chatbot, and it changed everything. No more typing opaque word constructs to find what we want, no more downloading files, entering passwords, or moving things around in an ever more complex universe of applications and connections. Artificial intelligence is here to save the day.
Machines that do anything we want, with whom we can interact as easily and pleasantly as if they were our friends, and that exist for the sole purpose of making our lives easier. Who could ever say no? Well apparently, the Google Bard AI did, and if it keeps going like this, it will wipe out a lot more than just $100 billion in market capitalisation.