• Google's dominance is facing new challenges as search habits shift.
• Social apps like TikTok and AI chatbots like ChatGPT are changing how we look for information.
• This story is one of a five-part series exploring the changing online search landscape.

It's never been easier to ditch Google search.

Just ask Mohamed Mura, a 37-year-old professional based in London, who began pulling back from the search engine during the pandemic.

Instead of typing into Google, he turned to TikTok for questions like "how to change a watch band." With the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, Mura's Google usage dropped further. He said the AI chatbot felt like a "second brain or agent" he could bounce ideas off of.

He now uses a mix of tools for search, like ChatGPT, Grok, TikTok, Reddit, Perplexity, and yes, still sometimes Google. He's not alone. AI search tools are becoming daily habits for many.

When presented with a list of tools to use when considering a purchase, US consumers said they preferred AI chat interfaces to traditional search engines, according to an August survey of about 2,000 respondents by the consulting firm McKinsey.

Young people, in particular, are also looking beyond Google to social apps like TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, or Instagram to find information. Nearly half (46%) of Gen Z users prefer to search on social media rather than Google, according to a survey last year from Forbes Advisor and Talker Research. That figure generally lines up with Google's own data on Gen Z's search preferences.

"Social search is definitely a hot topic," Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, a senior analyst at Forrester, told Business Insider, especially as "search behaviors fracture or distribute among a broader array of platforms aside from just Google." In fact, more US consumers are turning to social media platforms than to AI options, such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, according to a recent survey from EMARKETER, Business Insider's sister company.

Google is still king among traditional search engines and AI search tools, controlling around 90% of the global market, according to network services firm Cloudflare. Google has also responded to competition by adding AI overviews to many of its search results.

In its earnings report last month, Google's parent company Alphabet said quarterly sales from Google search rose 15% from a year ago to $56.6 billion, making up more than half of the company's overall revenue.

Google's market dominance in traditional search doesn't factor in searches on video apps like TikTok or e-commerce tools like Amazon, however. And Google's grip on the overall search landscape could loosen as the internet splinters into smaller communities.

Beyond AI chatbots and video apps, a slew of new search-focused startups, including Lore, a fandom-focused search engine, and Daydream, an e-commerce AI search tool for shopping, have emerged to support the demand for something new.

So, where are the best places to go if you want to try a new way of searching? It depends on what you're looking for.

Here are some search tips and tricks:

Finding new recipes or places to visit

AI tools like ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude are great at concocting original recipes with ingredients you already have at home. Video apps like TikTok or Instagram let you search for a recipe and actually see the cooking process before you try it.

Finding new recipes was the most common use case for TikTok's search engine, a 2023 survey from Adobe found, with people saying they were looking for "video tutorials," "product or service reviews," and "personal stories or anecdotes" on the app.

Video reviews are also handy when planning a trip, allowing you to see a hotel or destination before deciding to visit. TikTok released a product this year that lets users book hotels directly from videos in the app.

Young people "are looking for product or service recommendations and they're looking for restaurants to eat at," Mitchell-Wolf said. Social platforms are a "flourishing environment" for this category of search, she added.

Finding new outfits or things to decorate your home

If you're looking for inspiration, Pinterest can be a first stop in the search journey.

Design, particularly, is the top search use case (62%) for the moodboarding platform, according to a March survey from Adobe. Fashion advice was also popular.

A recent example: In August, Pinterest shared that searches for "vintage fall aesthetic" were up 1,074% year-over-year, and that there were upticks in searches around thrifted outfits, kitchen accessories, and interior decorating.

Social platforms like Instagram and TikTok can also be places to find inspiration. And for fashion specifically, there's a wave of new startups building shopping search tools, from personalized e-commerce search engines like Daydream to more niche platforms helping people find secondhand items, such as Beni.

If you already have a product in mind to buy, you might turn to the giants Amazon and Walmart. EMARKETER found that 56% of US consumers go to Amazon for search and 45% to Walmart.

"Amazon has become a major destination for product search," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at EMARKETER. "They've taken share from Google in that space over the years because they have so many products that Prime members can typically start a search there, and then maybe they go to Google next."

Searching the web without prying eyes

Google, famously, is a data-collection machine. When you're searching in its app, Chrome, Gmail, or some other Google-owned product, you're helping the company build a detailed advertising profile on who you are and what you're looking to buy.

Search engines and browsers like DuckDuckGo and Brave offer tools for privacy-conscious users who don't want their search habits tracked.

"We know that people are tired of being exploited online by scammers and by data-hungry companies who essentially have made it their business model to sell users out to the highest advertising bidder," said Beah Burger-Lenehan, SVP of product at DuckDuckGo.

Finding answers from real people

Sometimes websites don't have the answers we're looking for. We want answers from everyday people.

Have you found yourself typing "[insert search topic here] reddit" into Google? You're not alone.

"Particularly with Gen Z or younger users, if they want to see what other people are saying, maybe they don't start on Google, they will start on TikTok or go to Reddit," Canaves said.

Reddit told investors that in the third quarter, over 75 million people searched on its platform each week.

The top search categories on Reddit are tech, news, and personal finance, according to a 2024 Adobe survey. However, a good chunk of people are also turning to the platform for career or relationship advice, as well as product recommendations.

In December, the company launched a chatbot search tool called Reddit Answers that summarizes user recommendations and discussions in a conversational manner. Daily query volume for the feature is up over 20% since last quarter, the company told Business Insider.

If you just don't want to use Google, try these

If you're simply tired of staring at the Google search bar and want something that's similar, but not owned by Google, there's always Microsoft's Bing.

You can also try out AI-powered browsers like OpenAI's Atlas and Perplexity's Comet, which allow you to search conversationally or use an AI agent to complete certain tasks.

Some AI search tools offer voice assistants, which can make searching more seamless.

"It's a lot less friction if you're speaking to an AI assistant versus having to type a long query," Canaves said. "The output that you get will be a lot more nuanced than what you would get from typing in three or four keywords into a Google search bar."

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
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Data guru Hakeem Shibly recently dug into every US software engineering pay package shared with Levels.fyi in the past year.

His goal: Figure out which cities pay engineers the best after adjusting for the cost of living.

The Greater Seattle Area tops the list, followed by Austin — ahead of the big dog, Silicon Valley, which ranked third.

A few surprises: Denver and Boulder edge out bigger, older hubs such as Chicago. The Raleigh-Durham research area in North Carolina ranks pretty high, offering solid compensation along with a reasonable cost of living.

Want more options beyond Big Tech hubs like Silicon Valley and the Seattle area? San Diego, Dallas, and Atlanta offer software engineers a solid combination of pay and manageable living expenses, according to Levels.fyi data.

If you want to know which tech jobs pay what kind of money, check out Business Insider's salary data here.

And here's the data from Levels.fyi, in a handy chart from BI's awesome graphics crew:

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• I visited the New York Meta Lab pop-up. It got me excited for the future of Meta's in-person retail.
• The pop-up was artfully designed and loaded with different use cases for the company's AI glasses, which you can demo.
• Meta staff dwarfed the number of customers, but it may have been a quiet period at 11:30 a.m. on a weekday.

For years, Meta has built its businesses online. Now, it's also expanding to brick-and-mortar — including a new two-story location in NYC that I visited this week.

As it continues to launch new gadgets, including its popular Ray-Ban and Oakley AI glasses and VR headsets, Meta is accelerating its in-person pop-ups. In 2022, Meta opened its store in Burlingame, California, near the company's Reality Labs campus. Pop-ups expanded to Los Angeles in 2024 and Las Vegas in October 2025. The recently opened pop-up in New York is smack in the middle of 5th Avenue's shopping hub.

In-person retail could send new customers to Reality Labs products. Meta's AI glasses and VR headsets have been available at major retailers for some time, but the Meta Labs pop-ups are the company's first stand-alone glasses stores.

Are these pop-ups the future of Meta's retail presence? I visited the New York location to find out.

The warning signs were there.

Long before guests found themselves abruptly kicked out of their "Sonder by Marriott" stays this month, Sonder, the Airbnb rival, was battling sloppy accounting, a litany of lawsuits, and a stock price so low it was nearly delisted from the Nasdaq.

Bankruptcy filings and SEC records show just how stark the signs were — and raise questions about why Marriott, the world's biggest hotel chain, got into bed with the one-time unicorn.

The San Francisco startup, founded in 2014, leased apartments and hotel rooms in bulk, redesigned them with a minimalist aesthetic, and rented them to travelers. It's the brainchild of Canadian Francis Davidson, who is the ideal of a 2010s founder: VC-backed, college dropout, Forbes 30 Under 30. He offered a "revolutionary" promise: Goodbye, poorly decorated Airbnbs with quirky hosts. Hello, streamlined rentals managed with modern technology.

In August 2024, he unveiled his pièce de résistance: a deal between Sonder and blue-chip Marriott, which was heralded as a way to bring that vision into the future.

"Making this deal happen — along with the multi-party, complex capital raise I orchestrated — was the hardest thing I've ever done," former CEO Davidson wrote in June.

At the time, analysts lauded the deal, noting that it would add 9,000 rooms to Marriott's portfolio — a key figure for the hotel giant's valuation. Sonder said after the deal closed it would reduce costs by as much as $50 million.

Looking back, the Marriott deal was maybe less of a legitimization and more of a Hail Mary. Since going public at a $2 billion valuation in 2021, Sonder had faced layoffs, lawsuits, and a slew of executive departures, including Davidson.

"Marriott, no lie, they saved the company last year with their agreement," Logan Ford, who worked in sales at Sonder before being laid off last week, told Business Insider.

The $76 billion hotel giant didn't come to Sonder's rescue again. In court filings for Sonder's bankruptcy case, Marriott said that after it helped cover about $1.5 million in payroll, Sonder pressed the company for as much as $50 million to pay for shutdown operations. Marriott declined, and shortly afterward, signs appeared on the doors of Sonder properties telling guests to vacate.

Thousands of customers were suddenly left with no place to sleep.

Now, some in the industry are questioning how Marriott missed the warning signs. "I don't know how anyone with any iota of business sense could have thought that this was a good idea," said Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, a California brokerage firm that tracks hotel ownership and financing trends.

"The Marriott partnership is what essentially kept the company afloat for the next year," Ford said — and when it ended, there was nothing left.

A unicorn that survived the pandemic

At the height of COVID-19, Sonder laid off a third of its staff and had been sued for allegedly bailing on leases, a claim that Sonder denied and for which litigation is ongoing.

In 2021, the company, which gained unicorn status two years earlier, announced it was going public via a SPAC at a $2.2 billion valuation. SPACs — or special purpose acquisition companies — offered what many startups saw as a quicker, less scrutinized path to going public than a traditional IPO.

Sonder had survived while competitors like Lyric folded, and was now on its way to becoming an "iconic 21st-century brand," then-CEO Davidson told Business Insider at the time.

"This kind of financial discipline, with a really rapid response to the pandemic, has meant that we've been able to outperform a lot of the competition and be in a relatively strong position," Davidson said.

Its public market debut was lackluster. On its first day of trading, Sonder's stock dipped 8%.

Its downward spiral continued. Shares traded under $1 for much of the following year, leading the Nasdaq to threaten a delisting.

There was another round of layoffs — this time 17% — in 2024, and Sonder was hit with lawsuits accusing it of not paying rent or properly managing its buildings.

One New Orleans hotel that Sonder managed, the 100-year-old Jung Hotel, alleged that the startup had tarnished its reputation. There wasn't enough security, which led the hotel to become a "magnet for violent crime" and a "warzone," the landlord said in the lawsuit. The hotel was also not properly cleaned, with toenails in the bed sheets and blood on the linens, the complaint said.

Sonder disputed the claims, and the lawsuit was settled, as was a 2022 lawsuit Sonder filed against the Jung Hotel's owner at the time.

"SCAM- NOT AN OPERATING HOTEL," one online review read, according to the Jung Hotel's 2023 complaint. "Just another short term rental place poorly taken over by Sonder. You've been warned."

A hotel in San Francisco sued, saying Sonder wasn't paying its rent and owed more than $1.2 million as agreed upon in a lease termination agreement. Sonder denied the claims, and the lawsuit was settled.

The company's accounting also had problems. In 2024, Sonder revealed in an SEC filing that its financial records since its debut as a publicly traded company could not be trusted after being reviewed by an auditor.

The stock fell 38%, and Sonder said in filings that it was asking lenders not to call in loans or otherwise punish the company for the errors.

Despite that, Marriott took a chance. Six months after its announcement of two years of unreliable financial reporting, Sonder announced its deal with Marriott. All of Sonder's properties would now fall under the "Sonder by Marriott Bonvoy" branding.

"When we did the deal back in August 2024, everyone around the table was aligned that plugging into Marriott's distribution should increase revenues for Sonder," Davidson told Business Insider this week. "The fact that in the end there was seemingly a decline comes as a great surprise, I think, for all parties involved."

Sonder declined to comment on the record.

Sonder's rooms allowed Marriott to boost its "net unit growth," or the number of rooms it can rent, a key metric followed closely by investors and Wall Street analysts. The Sonder deal allowed it to add 9,000 units to its portfolio, it said when it announced the deal.

For Sonder, it provided desperately needed cash. Marriott would pay Sonder $15 million in "key money" as part of the deal.

Some in the hotel industry said they were surprised at the deal. Reay of Atlas Hospitality Group said it "absolutely made no sense."

"Whoever did the due diligence, whoever did the underwriting on this, if they're still at Marriott, I'd be surprised," he said, comparing Sonder to a WeWork-style implosion waiting to happen.

Robert Rauch, a hotel consultant and Marriott franchisee, said the company's confidence in its own brand perhaps clouded its judgment. He called Marriott "a great company" that is "vertically integrated better than any company I've seen," but said its deal with Sonder was "a bad risk."

A Marriott spokesperson declined to comment.

Multiple people with familiar with Sonder's said the Marriott deal sustained the company.

"The Marriott agreement a year ago is actually what kept us from bankruptcy," Ford, the sales employee, said.

Even still, Sonder was in a precarious position.

"Management has concluded that there is substantial doubt, which is not alleviated, about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern for at least one year," it wrote in a November 2024 filing. One year after the filing, Sonder was out of business.

Final days of Sonder

By this November, Sonder was drowning in debt, nearly out of cash, and out of options, according to legal filings.

Sonder had been negotiating for emergency financing and a potential buyer to take over its assets in bankruptcy, but the bidder abruptly pulled out on November 2, the filings said.

Three days later, Marriott agreed to provide Sonder with about $1.5 million in funding to cover one week of US payroll, the hotel chain said in filings in Sonder's bankruptcy case, calling it a short-term move to help keep thousands of guests housed.

The "ink was barely dry" when Sonder, on November 6, sent Marriott a $50 million proposal for Marriott to cover the costs of winding down Sonder, according to bankruptcy filings. The hotel giant said it rejected that plan, along with two other revised proposals for $28 million and $14 million.

Marriott accused Sonder of trying to "leverage guest safety as a bargaining chip" in order to get money out of it.

Sonder threatened that "unless Marriott financed its wind-down, it would shut down hotel systems and leave thousands of guests locked out of their rooms mid-stay," Marriott alleged in bankruptcy papers.

On November 7, Marriott terminated its 20-year license agreement after Sonder told Marriott it faced an "imminent free-fall liquidation." Marriott said in court filings that this allowed it to take over guest support and begin rebooking travelers.

The move left guests scrambling, forcing many to leave their stays with little warning.

Marriott said Sonder notified customers that it would no longer honor their reservations and advised them to contact Marriott regardless of whether they had booked stays outside Marriott's platforms. Sonder, which reported having over 1,400 employees at the end of 2024, also laid off all staff the same day without severance.

On November 10, Sonder announced its Chapter 7 bankruptcy plans.

In its press statement, Sonder blamed financial strain, technical problems integrating with Marriott's booking systems, and a sharp drop in bookings from Marriott's Bonvoy program. Marriott, in turn, said the collapse stemmed from Sonder's own mismanagement.

"Sonder collected tens of millions of dollars in advance payments for reservations it now admits it will never honor, spent weeks on a failed restructuring without any contingency plan, and failed to reserve sufficient liquidity to support an orderly wind-down," Marriott said in a bankruptcy filing.

The company, Marriott claimed, used guests' advance payments and deposits to bankroll its own operating expenses.

Amid the fallout, Marriott tried to distance itself from Sonder.

"It's important to understand, and I think it's important for the public to understand, that there was a license agreement, and, quite frankly, nothing more between Marriott and Sonder," an attorney for Marriott told a Delaware bankruptcy judge this week.

Sonder managed and operated its thousands of apartment-style and boutique hotel short-term rental units around the globe — not Marriott, the lawyer emphasized.

For Marriott, the end of the deal was a black eye as news stories and social media were flooded with stories of travellers left without options and being given conflicting advice.

For Sonder, it was the end of the line.

• The NTSB says the UPS plane crash in Louisville was caused by metal fatigue in the engine hardware.
• The crash killed 14 people and led to the grounding of the MD-11 fleet by the FAA.
• Metal fatigue-related plane crashes are rare but have occurred in previous airline incidents.

A federal investigation into the crash of a UPS cargo jet that killed 14 people in Louisville, Kentucky, earlier this month found that the engine of the plane came off its wing because of metal fatigue and hardware stress.

A preliminary accident report published by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday showed frame-by-frame images of the General Electric-made engine completely coming off and then smashing into the body of the Honolulu-bound plane as the aircraft took off. It also included photos of the wreckage being studied in the NTSB lab.

The probe "found evidence of fatigue cracks in addition to areas of overstress failure" in a part that attached the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighter's left engine to the wing, the report said.

The three crew members on the plane and 11 people on the ground were killed, the report said. Another 23 people on the ground were injured. The plane crash left a trail of destruction in an industrial area near Louisville's Muhammad Ali International Airport, satellite images in the report showed.

The report added that the plane initially climbed to about 30 feet above ground and cleared a fence at the end of a runway before its main landing gear hit the roof of a UPS warehouse at the edge of the airport. The plane then hit a storage yard and two other buildings, including a petroleum recycling facility, and was mostly consumed by fire.

Metal fatigue crashes

The MD-11 involved was a 34-year-old tri-engine widebody jet that was first delivered to Thai Airways in 1991, before being acquired by UPS in 2006. Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the MD11 fleet, which UPS and FedEx use, in the wake of the crash.

Plane crashes caused by metal fatigue are rare, but similar accidents have occurred before.

Thursday's report referenced a similar but much deadlier crash in 1979. American Airlines flight 191, a McDonnell-Douglas DC-10-10 aircraft, crashed into an open field at the end of a runway at Chicago-O'Hare International Airport.

During takeoff, the left engine on the left wing separated from the airplane and fell onto the runway. The airplane was destroyed in the crash and subsequent fire, and 273 people, including two people on the ground, were killed.

More recently, in 2018, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 experienced an uncontained engine failure in the left engine after departing from New York's LaGuardia Airport en route to Dallas. The incident killed a window seat passenger.

In 2016, a Southwest flight blew an engine as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, and shrapnel tore a five-by-16-inch hole just above the wing. The plane landed safely. The NTSB said a fan blade had broken off because of metal fatigue.

In Thursday's report, the NTSB said its investigation of UPS flight 2976 is ongoing.

• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says people need to be more civilized while flying.
• That means dressing better and being nicer at the airport over the holiday season, Duffy said.
• Getting to the airport in a "good mood" will make the experience better for fliers and staff alike, he said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says he wants to improve holiday travel, and people can help by dressing up and being courteous.

Duffy spoke to Fox Business on Wednesday about the importance of good behavior.

"Donald Trump talks about the golden age of transportation, the golden age of America. But the golden age in transportation truly begins with you, the traveler," Duffy said.

"If you just watch social media, you have brawls at the baggage claim, you have passengers berating gate agents," Duffy said. "We have unruly passengers on airplanes. People dress up like they're going to bed when they fly."

Duffy added that some people are "having a hard time" fitting heavy luggage into the overhead bins. Checked bag fees start at $35 for most major US airlines, which motivates some travelers to maximize their carry-on capacity.

"And so we want to push people, as we come into a really busy travel season: Help people out, be in a good mood, dress up, bring civility back to travel," he said.

Airlines' clothing policies vary. Earlier this year, Spirit Airlines updated its rules for travelers' clothing, saying passengers could be barred from boarding if they are "inadequately clothed," including if they are barefoot.

The US is hurtling toward a peak travel season as people rush to get home for Thanksgiving. After the government shutdown, airlines have been cleared to ramp flights up to their pre-shutdown frequency.

Duffy's comments also come at a time when in-flight incidents are reaching a new high.

According to November 19 statistics from the DOT, the FAA has seen a 400% increase in "in-flight outbursts" since 2019, which the department defines as "ranging from disruptive behavior to outright violence."