Sacks’ claim has two parts: (1) as AI answers replace traditional search, Google will not be able to maintain its historically dominant search share, and (2) Google’s AI franchise will not achieve the same kind of dominant market share that Google Search has.

On (1), as of late 2025 Google still controls about 90% of the global search-engine market, with Bing at ~4% and others far behind—very similar to its pre‑ChatGPT dominance, despite some brief dips just below 90%. (gs.statcounter.com) AI chatbots and answer engines are growing, but they have not yet replaced a large enough fraction of search queries to clearly show Google losing its “same dominant share”; its lead remains overwhelming.

On (2), in the AI‑chatbot/answer market, OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently has ~80%+ global share, while Google Gemini is only around 2–3%, well behind ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft’s Copilot in most measurements of referral or usage share. (gs.statcounter.com) That suggests Google’s AI franchise is far from Search‑like dominance, but the claim that it will never reach comparable relative share is inherently long‑term and can’t be settled in 2025.

Because the prediction is explicitly about what happens “as more and more searches get replaced with AI” over the coming years, and both Google’s search dominance and its AI position could still change substantially after 2025, there isn’t enough elapsed time to determine the final outcome. The current data are directionally consistent with the second part (Gemini is not dominant) but do not yet confirm the irreversible loss of Google’s search dominance or permanently cap its AI share. Therefore the prediction must be rated as inconclusive (too early to tell).