Available evidence to late 2025 shows no meaningful user exodus from Google Search or its broader consumer ecosystem due to the Gemini/“woke AI” controversies, and Google has maintained – even strengthened – its dominance.

1. Gemini “woke” backlash happened, but Google course‑corrected rather than simply “continuing on the same path.” After the February 2024 uproar over racially inaccurate historical images and other politically skewed outputs, Google paused Gemini’s ability to generate images of people and publicly acknowledged it had “got it wrong,” promising and implementing fixes. Later controversies (e.g., on how Gemini discussed pedophilia) added criticism but were again met with adjustment and public contrition, not a hardline insistence on the original behavior. (forbes.com) This weakens the antecedent of Friedberg’s conditional claim (“if Google continues on this path”).

2. Search users have not shifted in large numbers to competitors; Google’s market share remains ~90%. As of May 2025, StatCounter‑summarized data shows Google at roughly 89–90% global search share, with Bing at ~4% and other search engines in the low single digits. This is the first time in over a decade Google even dipped slightly below 90%, but it remains overwhelmingly dominant in both global and U.S. search. (en.wikipedia.org) There is no sign of a mass user migration that would constitute a “meaningful” loss of users in the sense Friedberg implied (i.e., enough to seriously erode dominance).

3. Google’s search and ads businesses are growing, not shrinking, despite AI competition. Alphabet’s 2024–2025 earnings show double‑digit revenue growth and strong search/ads performance: Q4 2024 and multiple 2025 quarters report Search & Other ad revenue up roughly 10–15% year‑over‑year, with total advertising revenue also growing solidly. (cnbc.com) A Nasdaq analysis of Alphabet’s “$100 billion quarter” notes that Search still holds about 90% of global search traffic and that AI‑driven search features are supporting, not undermining, ad revenue. (nasdaq.com) This is inconsistent with a story where market forces are punishing Google by pulling users and ad dollars away.

4. Google’s AI features are seeing massive adoption rather than abandonment. AI Overviews in Search reached over 1.5 billion monthly users by Q1 2025, and Google reports hundreds of millions of active Gemini users, with rapid growth. (cnbc.com) That suggests users are engaging with Google’s AI‑infused search rather than fleeing it for rivals.

5. Rivals like Perplexity and Bing are growing, but at a scale that doesn’t yet threaten Google’s dominance. Perplexity processed about 780 million queries in May 2025 (~30 million per day) and has raised large sums at a high valuation, but that volume is tiny compared to Google’s billions of daily searches. (en.wikipedia.org) Bing’s global share remains only a few percent. (en.wikipedia.org) These gains are meaningful for startups and Microsoft but not yet “market correction” on the scale Friedberg described.

6. Financial markets view Alphabet as an AI and search winner, not a company being disciplined for an inferior product. Reporting from the FT, WSJ, Reuters, Barron’s, and others in late 2025 describes Alphabet adding over $1 trillion in market cap, nearing a $4 trillion valuation, and being treated as a leading AI beneficiary. Analysts emphasize its reinforced dominance in search and AI and its strong earnings and margins. (ft.com) That outcome is the opposite of what you’d expect if “the market [were] not going to fail us” and were punishing Google for keeping an inferior, ideologically skewed product.

Putting this together: while there was real user backlash and some incremental competitive pressure, there is no strong evidence that Google has lost a meaningful number of users/consumers in a way that seriously erodes its search dominance or that market forces have “corrected” Google’s position. Instead, Google remains the overwhelmingly dominant search provider with growing AI usage and strong financial performance. On the observable 2024–2025 data, Friedberg’s prediction has not materialized and is best scored as wrong rather than merely “too early” or ambiguous.