A new analysis from Flywheel Studio, an app development agency, has put a staggering price tag on ChatGPT’s new browser: $30.4 billion in potential lost annual revenue for Google. The report, which analyzed ChatGPT’s massive user base, calculates that this much search ad revenue could be redirected. But here’s why this matters, and it’s not just a simple search-for-search competitor: the analysis argues that ChatGPT is fundamentally changing how people access the internet, positioning itself to cut Google out of the equation entirely.
The math behind the $30 billion problem
So, how did Flywheel get to that $30 billion number? The analysis is based on publicly available data. It starts with ChatGPT’s massive 800 million weekly active users. It then assumes those users perform an average of 3.5 searches per day. If ChatGPT captures 90.4% of those queries (mirroring Google’s current global market share), that’s 2.5 billion daily searches. Using Google’s own public revenue and search volume data, the researchers calculated that Google makes approximately $0.033 per search. The math is simple and brutal: that equates to a potential revenue shift of $83 million per day, or $30.4 billion per year.
It’s not about search, it’s about eliminating the middleman
The numbers, however, aren’t the real story. The true threat to Google, according to Flywheel Studio’s founder Erik Goins, is that ChatGPT is no longer just a place to find information. It’s becoming a platform to do things. For two decades, Google’s entire business model has been built on being the world’s most effective middleman. You search for “hotels in Miami,” Google shows you ads and links for Expedia, Zillow, or OpenTable, and it gets a cut of the action. Goins argues this entire consumer journey is now being bypassed. “You don’t search for ‘hotels in Miami’ and click through Google results anymore,” says Goins. “You just ask ChatGPT and it connects you directly to Expedia or Booking.com.”
The core of the issue is that ChatGPT is becoming an “extensible platform,” a new front door to the internet. “Google doesn’t have any equivalent capability right now,” Goins continues. “They built their business on being the middleman between users and websites. ChatGPT is eliminating the middleman entirely.” While the $30.4 billion figure is a projection, it highlights a deep, structural vulnerability. The threat isn’t that users will stop searching; it’s that they’ll no longer need Google to find, book, or buy.
ChatGPT is building a direct bridge from a user’s request to a service, and Google’s tollbooth is simply not on the new road.
