Google search (and online direct marketing broadly) have pretty direct impact on sales. It's true that they held up well, relative to "traditional advertising" in recent downturn.
However... there are a lot of money losing campaigns out there. A lot of that relates to economic buoyancy. Startups showing growth for the next round. But also established companies getting into new sectors, defending market share, etc.
We are still, I think, in a "greed mode" economy. Fear hasn't really shown it's face yet. If that switch flips... I suspect meta/alphabet will be impacted this time.
I do agree, Google and probably Meta even more so are likely to be impacted now just because they've become so overwhelmingly dominant. There's nowhere else left to cut for a lot of brands.
What will be more interesting though is if that money comes back to Meta or Google, or if people will find new, better opportunities while they pull back (eg. what happened to TV in 08).
I think your point about dominance is a main player. I can make a dozen cases for LLMs as world of opportunity and compliments for both of these companies.
It takes a lot of opportunity/gain to hedge against the risk of losing 20% of search or social media revenue.
If you already have the whole market, losing share is easier than gaining.
But to a dominant incumbent..."threat" just tends to come with bigger multiplier.
However... there are a lot of money losing campaigns out there. A lot of that relates to economic buoyancy. Startups showing growth for the next round. But also established companies getting into new sectors, defending market share, etc.
We are still, I think, in a "greed mode" economy. Fear hasn't really shown it's face yet. If that switch flips... I suspect meta/alphabet will be impacted this time.
It's really hard to tell though.