“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else.” reminded Liz Reid, Google’s Vice President of search. She was speaking on the proposed anti-trust remedies of Department of Justice (DOJ) to share user click data and search results with competitors. Reid warned that sharing Google’s proprietary data would create significant privacy risks for users.
It is unsurprising that DOJ is concerned about the monopolistic dominance of Google. It has user data of mind-boggling magnitude. By their own revelation, Google’s “Knowledge Graph” database contained “more than 500 billion facts”. Being the market leader in search and browser, Google finds itself embroiled in anti-trust lawsuits that could force divestiture of it’s browser Chrome. In the past two decades, Google has been a gateway to the internet. It has collected a huge database of search queries that point to what a particular user had in his mind. It has tracked the users with it’s Google Map feature. It has collected minute data including age group, buying patterns, browsing history and interests of the user. It probably knows more than your family about your reading pattern, entertainment preferences and hobbies. It likely has an accurate timeline of your life than your own memory can serve. Google VP was right in expressing privacy concerns if data is shared. That begets a question: How is user data safe with Google? Importantly, why are they collecting and storing such sensitive data? What applies to Google’s competitor can be said of Google itself. Google isn’t an exception in the search engine industry.
Google is a near monopoly in search engine business. Microsoft Bing is a distant second while Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are prominent names with a tiny market share. Most search engines collect search and browsing history, location location, IP address and devices. All search engines receive this information but some like DuckDuckGo doesn’t log this information. It provides results purely based on keyword although it accounts for approximate locations or specific contexts if you ask for say, coffee shops near me etc. This privacy-first approach has made DuckDuckGo popular among users seeking anonymous browsing. It’s even the default search engine in the Tor Browser, which is specifically designed to browse the internet without being tracked. DuckDuckGo secures access to your language preference, region etc. by storing it locally in your device than violating your privacy.
While search engines are facing the legal heat over privacy violations, the search industry itself is transforming in AI era. AI Chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity are making search easier by providing succinct answers within seconds. The traditional search engine that provides a list of web pages to keyword queries is cumbersome compared to LLM responses. User preference is shifting to instant answers and Google has adopted AI Overview feature to cater to these user base. As per a March 2025 analysis by Pew Research Center, Google users were less likely to click on result links when visiting search pages with an AI summary compared with those without one. Search engine giants are less capable of collecting user information if a search window is immediately closed after accessing information. Longer browsing period is the interest of search engine business but not in interest of privacy. AI summaries facilitates users to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with AI response.
AI hasn’t reduced the privacy violations. The interactive nature of Chatbots have emboldened users to share their personal details. As the AI LLM’s are capable of friendly conversations and casual chats, it is collecting more confidential information than search engines. Further, AI startups are even using human reviewers to analyse the conversations. Google had issued a stark warning to users of Gemini urging them to avoid sharing confidential data, as conversations maybe reviewed by humans for upto three years. Companies like Open AI and Anthropic too have acknowledged that human reviewers may examine chats to improve AI performance and address safety issues. Grok, in its privacy statement explicitly recommends to not input any personal data — as it will be used. Grok is also used for medical diagnosis where you can upload your reports say X-ray images and receive a response. The medical features inbuilt in AI chatbots represent a whole new level of privacy concerns compared to text and images uploads.
To sum up, privacy violations are increasing and the brazenness of tech giants is astonishing as internet search evolves. Government’s across the world are focused more on winning the AI war than on reining in the privacy concerns. Whether it’s US with multiple AI LLM’s or China with Deepseek, privacy doesn’t figure among the top concerns of the governments, law enforcement and regulators. India isn’t ready nor does India have it’s indigenous AI bots to demand adherence to privacy laws. Unless Indian users can regulate own search behavior and monitor the information being shared, India will remain prone to privacy loss of its citizens. Government and startups should fast track development of own secure AI Chatbots so that our users are less dependent on foreign corporations and governments in handling it’s data.
