Search is dead. I have been hearing.

I have been wondering where this all goes since the introduction of all the AI models and platforms that are gaining steam.

After listening to an interview of Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, and listening to his plans around Google’s AI First approach it is apparent that is far from the truth.

The better term is something along the lines of: search is changing.

Today is the Google I/O 2025 event and Google is unveiling their new search interface “AI MODE” which incorporates search and AI in a more native way (paraphrasing what Sundar said in an interview prior to the event).

I was reminded at the scope and breadth of the Google ecosystem and products. Search, YouTube, their mobile devices, Cloud, Drive, Gmail, self driving cars, their own chips, and so on…

And their plan is to integrate AI across all their products.

Their scale is unrelatable to most of us. And they are going big on innovation.

My takeway was that the AI market is enormous. Bigger than any market we have seen in business. And that Google isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Even at their scale, I am very bullish on Google as an innovator.

Which means that the world’s small businesses still have an opportunity to leverage the Google ecosytem to create awareness and grow their businesses.

As a small business that leverages Google to grow; this made me confident that their playground for growth will change but isn’t going away.

I do not see Google pulling a Blockbuster and digging their heels in and relying on the “old way”.

We shall see…

PS: I found this in my glove box today. Its from 2011 (I have had one of my cars since 2004) and it’s my MapQuest printout for driving directions.

The moral of the story is that nothing stays the same. Let’s all embrace the change.

Anthony Balsamo

Anthony Balsamo is the co-founder of Vonk Digital, a website and marketing platform for mortgage professionals. He's a business owner with two decades of hands-on experience building and marketing companies. First his own mortgage company, now a software company and agency serving loan officers, brokers, and lenders across the US. He writes from the operator's seat, not the sidelines.

Anthony spent the last 20 years in the mortgage industry. In 2006 he co-founded a four-person brokerage and grew it into a multi-state lender that made the Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 lists, was named the San Diego Business Journal's #1 Fastest-Growing Company, and earned a spot on Entrepreneur Magazine's Entrepreneur 360 list of the most entrepreneurial companies in the country. After selling the company in 2018, he stayed on for over a year to help merge the two organizations.

His focus is how mortgage professionals actually generate business, combining online and real-world strategy across websites, paid ads, email, retargeting, content, SEO, and increasingly AI search.

Vonk provides one part of that picture; but Anthony writes and practices the whole process, from a deliberately skeptical, evidence-first point of view shaped by watching every platform shift, and the recycled "certainty" sold with each one, since 2006.

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