It’s hard to think of Google as a comeback story, because it never went away, but in the world of AI , it’s a fitting narrative. The company was broadly mocked for its early moves in the generative era, which were mostly stumbles . Upstarts like Perplexity and ChatGPT were nipping at its market share with arguably more innovative experiences. It had to navigate choppy antitrust waters.

Today, Google is in a much stronger position. Not because it’s just coming off its I/O developer conference , or because it has the best model or because it commands a major AI ecosystem. Those titles get passed around the big labs every few months. The reason is much simpler: the business is holding up.

AI hasn’t broken Google

Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings showed Google Services revenue up 16% to $89.6 billion and Google Search and “Other” revenue is up 19%.…