The tech giant is trying to have it both ways regarding how its search business will fare.

Liz Reid, the Alphabet search boss, has a tough job.

She's going around trying to convince the public that artificial intelligence hasn't killed Google's golden goose -- the search business that makes up more than half of parent-company Alphabet's sales.

At the same time, Google's lawyers are working to convince federal judges determining the company's fate that, in fact, AI poses a huge threat to its monopoly businesses.

So which is it? I asked Reid as much during Friday's episode of the "Bold Names" podcast. "This is really an expansionary moment," she said. "So both Google can grow very successfully, and other people can grow successfully."

OK, but the conventional wisdom among many in Silicon Valley is that AI-powered chatbots and assistants will replace the need for search. Users will simply ask OpenAI's ChatGPT or xAI's Grok for answers to what they would have previously sought out using Google.

Reid counters that the advent of AI chatbots is helping fuel users wanting more information. So whether they seek it out the old-fashioned way (by googling it) or new ways (by asking ChatGPT), the overall pie of people wanting to discover information is growing.

That helps explain why the company says the number of search queries is up while, at the same time, its market share has eroded slightly -- falling below 90% this year, to levels not seen in roughly a decade, according to researcher Statcounter.

One of the winners is Microsoft. It has moved quickly to integrate partner OpenAI's AI models -- branded as Copilot -- into its Bing search page.

But with 3.98 % global market share, Bing, the No. 2 player behind Google, has little fizz. In other words, Microsoft isn't even Pepsi to Google's Coke. It is more like RC Cola.

During one of Google's two landmark antitrust trials, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella suggested to a judge that more than just advances in AI were needed to overcome Google's search dominance, especially on mobile phones.

"The distribution advantage Google has today doesn't go away," he told a judge in 2023. "In fact, if anything, I worry a lot that -- even in spite of my enthusiasm that there is a new angle with AI -- this vicious cycle that I'm trapped in could even become even more vicious because the defaults get reinforced."

His argument was backed up in a recent lawsuit by billionaire Elon Musk against Apple. The suit is over that company's special relationship with OpenAI that powers some AI chats on iPhones.

Musk's companies xAI and X are arguing the iPhone is crucial to help usher in competing AI chats. They argue the Apple-OpenAI relationship gives ChatGPT an unfair advantage, even if Musk is gambling that eventually AI chats will usurp Apple's ecosystem.

Both Nadella's and Musk's positions highlight the importance of the mobile-phone user -- the data they're generating -- for the AI future.

It was a point further underscored in emails between Apple executives that were made public as part of the Google litigation. The case showed the close relationship the two giants have around search.

At one point, Apple was evaluating a potential acquisition of Bing. But executives held clear reservations.

"Not having mobile queries at scale is a huge liability for them since the most important search signal is engagement," one of Apple's senior executives told another about Microsoft's Bing. Apple didn't go through with a deal.

In its defense, Google lawyers often noted that a top search query on Bing was "Google."

Ultimately, the judge ruled Google's search was an improper monopoly, but delivered remedies that fell short of what the Justice Department was seeking. In large part, that was because of the threat that so-called generative AI poses to search.

"The emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case," Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his Sept. 2 opinion.

Now, in another antitrust case against Google, the tech giant is arguing AI is disrupting its ad business. This also has been found to be a monopoly by a different federal court, considering remedies of its own.

Ahead of that recent bench trial in Alexandria, Va., Google lawyers argued in a filing that the ad industry was already seeing significant disruptions.

"Even at the liability stage a year ago, the Court heard about ad-tech products that are continuing 'to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities,' including tools that facilitate ad purchasing across channels," the filing said. "In the time since, the changes wrought by AI have only come faster."

In its more than 20 years, Google has successfully adapted to changing technology. This included acquiring Android to put it directly into mobile computing. That bet helped place Google -- along with Apple -- as a gateway for users to the digital world through its app store.

To combat AI, Google has rolled out what it calls AI Overviews. These use a custom Gemini-based model to give users a summary of search results along with links to explore the sources on the web.

The tool already has more than two billion monthly users, according to the company. Google also has rolled out an AI Mode to directly compete against chatbots.

And Alphabet's financial results show things are still cooking at the Mountain View, Calif., company. Search revenue rose 12% in the second quarter from a year earlier, to a record $54.2 billion, the company reported in July.

Still, data suggests users of AI Overviews aren't clicking on links as much.

Search boss Reid didn't seem fazed. Whether a person is searching deeply for information on sneakers to buy or asking an AI chat about shoes, the user still must click on a link to actually buy those new kicks.

"None of the AI [answers] substitute the need for the actual pair of shoes," Reid said. "So you're still likely to click through even if you're doing research initially."

And that's really Google's business: connecting buyers with sellers. Not search.