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Zillow Stocks Get Crushed As Google Tests New Real Estate Listing Search Format

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Zillow shares have plummeted by over 9% on Monday over fears of what the future of online real estate might look like. Specifically, Google and its parent company Alphabet are running tests on adding real estate listings and sales into their search results. 

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Real estate tech strategist Mike DelPrete published screenshots that showed Google Search results with real estate listings powered by real estate data company HouseCanary. The listings allow users to view the full details on a property’s page, request a tour, and contact an agent. This model is very similar to how Zillow functions.

The Google real estate results, however, are just being tested and are only available in select markets and on mobile devices. 

Investors and experts in the field are already projecting Google’s success with this new search algorithm, leading to the decline in Zillow stocks. During Monday’s session, the stock was down by at least 11%, according to reports from CNBC.

Analysts from Wall Street stated that Zillow, however, is not very exposed to organic searching like Google’s new tool seems to be trying to capitalize on, so this drop in stock could be temporary. 

Alec Brondolo, a Wells Fargo analyst said that he would not “expect a meaningful financial impact from listings on Google shifting from organic to paid,” especially since Zillow is not overly dependent on organic search results for traffic. 

“The listings product appears similar to Google Hotel Metasearch results; introduction could increase traffic cost to Zillow, but disintermediation unlikely,” CNBC reports Brondolo said in a Monday note to clients. 

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“In the hotel category, Google merchandises hotel rooms in search results as a metasearch ad product for OTAs. We would expect a similar approach in real estate, with Zillow, Homes.com, Realtor.com, etc. bidding for home listing ad units rather than Google attempting to monetize directly with an ad product sold to agents.”

Some analysts, however, can see the longer term implications of Google’s new search tool and how it could compete with Zillow and other popular online real estate portals. 

Michael NG of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to clients that he believes Google’s real estate listings show to be in an advertising format for buy-side agents, so it directly competes with Zillow’s Premier Agent program by “facilitating lead generation” for both agents and prospective buyers. 

“While we don’t expect a direct near-term impact on Zillow’s business, given that most of Zillow’s traffic is direct (e.g., Zillow.com, StreetEasy.com, mobile apps) and Google’s new product is currently limited to select markets and mobile browsers, we view this development as a long-term risk for real estate portals like Zillow,” Ng wrote.

Oppenheimer’s Jason Helfstein stated that Google’s expansion into real estate will likely impact the number of Zillow’s consumers; which hit up to 228 million in the third quarter. This could cause their ability to monetize to decrease. 

“The impact would likely take years to play out and would need to be rolled out across the US to meaningfully impact real estate portal traffic,” Helfstein said.

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Zuckerberg Testifies in Landmark Antitrust Trial Against Meta

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared as the first witness in a landmark antitrust trial defending his company, which owns Facebook, against accusations that it holds a monopoly in the social media industry. The trial is anticipated to last for another two months.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initiated the case in 2020, alleging Meta unfairly cemented its dominance in the market by acquiring Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. The FTC aims to dismantle Meta by requiring the spin-off of Instagram or WhatsApp. In his opening statements Monday, Daniel Matheson, lead attorney for the FTC, stated, “There’s nothing wrong with Meta innovating. It’s what happened next that is a problem.”

Dressed in a dark suit and pale blue tie, Zuckerberg took the stand Monday, where he argued that there were enough competitors in the space, citing TikTok, YouTube, and X as significant rivals.

Central to the FTC’s case are internal emails from Zuckerberg dating back to 2011, in which he noted Instagram’s rapid growth. Another email in 2012 revealed Zuckerberg’s concern that his company was falling “so far behind that we don’t even understand how far behind we are… I worry that it will take us too long to catch up.”

“Acquiring these competitive threats has enabled Facebook to sustain its dominance—to the detriment of competition and users—not by competing on the merits, but by avoiding competition.”

On the stand, Zuckerberg dismissed these as “relatively early” thoughts on acquiring the app and emphasized that Meta substantially enhanced Instagram post-acquisition.

Zuckerberg further insisted that Instagram’s appeal was its advanced camera technology rather than its social networking capabilities and maintained that the company sought acquisitions to enhance its services rather than stifle competition.

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“Acquisitions to improve and grow have never been found unlawful, and they should not be found unlawful here,” Meta’s lead lawyer, Mark Hansen, argued. He characterized the FTC lawsuit as “misguided” and insisted that Meta “acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to improve and grow them alongside Facebook.”

“How can the FTC maintain this monopolization case when [Meta] has never charged users a cent?”

However, Matheson highlighted how Zuckerberg spoke about “neutralizing” Instagram, calling it “a smoking gun” back in his 2012 memo.

“They decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them.”

Meta, boasting 3.27 billion daily active users across its platforms as of last year, anticipates Instagram will generate more than half of its U.S. advertising revenue in 2025, according to market research firm Emarketer. “Instagram has also been picking up the slack for Facebook on the user front, particularly among young people, for a long time,” Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg told the Associated Press.

“The trial also comes as Meta is trying to bring back OG Facebook in an effort to appeal to Gen Z and younger users as they join social media. Social media usage is far more fragmented today than it was in 2012 when Facebook acquired Instagram, and Facebook isn’t where the cool college kids hang out anymore. Meta needs Instagram to continue growing, especially as more advertisers think Instagram-first with their Meta budgets.”

The trial unfolds amidst claims that Zuckerberg actively sought former President Trump’s intervention to dismiss the FTC’s case. The Wall Street Journal reported meetings between Zuckerberg and Trump, coinciding with Meta’s notable actions favoring Trump and his allies.

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These include a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund, the appointment of Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White and former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick to Meta’s board. In January, Meta rolled back content moderation policies frequently criticized by Republicans as censorship. Additionally, Meta agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle litigation over his account suspension following the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.

When asked by the BBC to confirm Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts, Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro avoided a direct response, instead focusing on the broader impact of any decision.

“Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI.”

“The FTC’s lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

This trial coincides with another significant antitrust case against Google. The Department of Justice recently succeeded in establishing Google’s monopoly over online search, where they hold a market share of around 90%, prompting ongoing discussions about potential divestitures.

However, experts like Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia, suggest the FTC faces greater difficulty proving Meta’s market dominance, highlighting the comparatively competitive landscape in the social networking industry.

“I think they have a real uphill battle. They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”

Amazon and Apple also remain subjects of ongoing antitrust litigation by U.S. authorities.

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Alphabet Stock Drops After Samsung Considers Switching Default Search to Bing

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Samsung is considering ending its long-standing partnership with Google in favor of Bing as the default search engine for its devices. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, saw its stock drop by more than 3% in early trading Monday as a result of the news.

According to The New York Times, Google’s internal response to the possible change was “panic.” It is unclear whether Microsoft’s decision to incorporate ChatGPT into Bing was a driving factor in Samsung’s deliberation.

Since Google makes the bulk of its money from search ads, the development of AI search technology represents the greatest threat to Google’s search business in the past 25 years. As it stands, Google’s contract with Samsung generates around $3 billion in annual revenue. Google’s contract with Apple, which is up for renewal this year, brings in $20 billion in revenue.

Recent advances in AI have prompted Google to explore ways to incorporate AI into its flagship search product. According to internal reports, around 160 designers, engineers, and executives at Google are all working together in “sprint rooms” on a new project called Magi to build competitive AI-powered search features.

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Google is also working on a brand-new search engine that uses artificial intelligence more broadly. Plans for this new search engine are still in the early stages, and a release date has not been set. The future system will anticipate user searches, provide curated lists of potential purchases, and be more conversational, similar to Bing’s new search engine format. In the meantime, the goal of the Magi project is to enhance Google’s current search engine.

Jim Lecinski, a former Google vice president of sales and service and professor of marketing at Northwestern University, said the company has to now persuade users that it is as “powerful, competent and contemporary” as its competitors.

“If we are the leading search engine and this is a new attribute, a new feature, a new characteristic of search engines, we want to make sure that we’re in this race as well.”

During a test last week, Google employees quizzed the Magi project’s enhanced Google search on its conversational skills by asking it follow-up questions. Next month, Google plans to roll out the tools to the public, making them available to as many as 1 million users, with added functionality coming in the fall. According to The New York Times, the number will increase to 30 million users by the end of the year. The tools will only be available in the United States.

In a roadmap document, a Google executive revealed that the company is thinking about integrating artificial intelligence into Google Earth’s mapping features and providing a separate feature that lets users conduct music searches via conversation with a chatbot.

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A feature that uses AI to generate images within image results is also in the works, as is a feature that uses AI text conversations to teach users a new language. Users will also be able to ask a chatbot questions as they browse the web using a product called Searchalong.

Last year, Google made $162 billion from its search business. According to The New York Times, Google was taken aback by the prospect of Samsung, which sells hundreds of millions of smartphones with Google’s Android software every year, switching its default search engine.

In a statement to CNN, Google spokesperson Lara Levin said the company has always been committed to using AI to “improve the quality of our results” and “offer entirely new ways to search,” citing a feature rolled out last year that allowed users to search by combining images and words.

“We’ve done so in a responsible and helpful way that maintains the high bar we set for delivering quality information. Not every brainstorm deck or product idea leads to a launch, but as we’ve said before, we’re excited about bringing new AI-powered features to search and will share more details soon.”

Google has been involved in AI research for a long time, and its DeepMind lab in London is world-renowned. The company has also contributed to the development of autonomous vehicles and large language models used by chatbots. Due to concerns over the accuracy of AI, Google has been slow to integrate it into its search engine.

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Google’s AI Chatbot ‘Bard’ Makes a Factual Error, Costing Alphabet $100 Billion in Market Value

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Alphabet, the parent company of Google, saw a $100 billion drop in market value after Bard, its competing chatbot to Microsoft’s ChatGPT, made an error in an ad containing a demo.

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Texas Sues Google Over Facial Data Collection

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The state of Texas is suing Google for illegally collecting Texans’ facial and voice recognition information without their consent, according to a statement issued by the state attorney general’s office on Thursday.

For over a decade, a Texas consumer protection law has barred companies from collecting data on Texans’ faces, voices or other biometric identifiers without receiving prior informed consent. Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, said Google violated this law by recording identifiers such as “a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or record of hand or face geometry.”

“In blatant defiance of that law, Google has, since at least 2015, collected biometric data from innumerable Texans and used their faces and their voices to serve Google’s commercial ends. Indeed, all across the state, everyday Texans have become unwitting cash cows being milked by Google for profits.”

The law imposes a $25,000 fine for every violation. According to reports, millions of users in Texas had their information stored. The complaint explicitly references the Google Photos app, Google’s Nest camera, and Google Assistant as means of collection.

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A spokesman for Google, José Castañeda, accused Paxton of “mischaracterizing” products in “another breathless lawsuit.”

“For example, Google Photos helps you organize pictures of people by grouping similar faces, so you can easily find old photos. Of course, this is only visible to you, and you can easily turn off this feature if you choose and we do not use photos or videos in Google Photos for advertising purposes. The same is true for Voice Match and Face Match on Nest Hub Max, which are off-by-default features that give users the option to let Google Assistant recognize their voice or face to show their information. We will set the record straight in court.”

This lawsuit is the latest in a string of major cases brought against the company. Earlier this month, Arizona settled a privacy suit against Google for $85 million. Indiana, Washington and the District of Columbia also sued Google in January over privacy invasions related to location tracking.

In a much larger antitrust case, 36 states filed a lawsuit against Google in July over its control of the Android app store.

Paxton has gone after large technology corporations in the past for their privacy and monopolizing practices. In 2020, his office joined nine other states in filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google, which accused it of “working with Facebook Inc. in an unlawful manner that violated antitrust law to boost its already-dominant online advertising business.”

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After the Jan. 6 insurrection, Paxton demanded Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to be transparent about their content moderation procedures. This year, he also opened an investigation into Twitter over its reported percentage of fake accounts, saying that the company may be disingenuous about its numbers to inflate its value and raise its revenue.

In February, Paxton sued Meta for facial recognition software it provided users to help tag photos. The lawsuit is ongoing. However, Instagram is now required to ask for permission to analyze Texans’ facial features to properly use facial filters.

“Google’s indiscriminate collection of the personal information of Texans, including very sensitive information like biometric identifiers, will not be tolerated. I will continue to fight Big Tech to ensure the privacy and security of all Texans.”

In 2009, Texas revealed its privacy law, which covered biometric identifiers. Other states were implementing similar laws around the country during this same time. Texas was unique in that in the case of violations, the state of Texas would have to sue on behalf of the consumers.

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Alphabet, Google’s Parent Company, Earns $65 Billion In Revenue Thanks To Online Ads

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Google’s parent company, Alphabet, posted that they earned $65 billion in revenue during the third-quarter, exceeding Wall Street’s initial predictions and doubling their expected profits thanks to online advertisements. 

Over the last three months Alphabet’s revenue rose by 41% to $65.2 billion, marking its largest revenue figure in 14 years. Before the pandemic the corporation posted a profit of $21 billion.

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Alphabet saw its share price increase by 57% as well for the year. This makes it the best performer of all the “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). Its advertising revenue alone rose to $53 billion, up from $37.1 billion last year. 

Revenue from Alphabet’s cloud division rose by 45% to $4.99 billion, trailing behind Amazon Web Service and Microsoft Azure. Operation losses for the sector decreased by nearly 50%, from $1.2 billion to $644 million. 

Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet and Google, said “search is the heart of what we do. This quarter’s results show how our investments there are enabling us to build more helpful products for people and our partners.”

“Google campuses and cloud services will be run on carbon-free energy by 2030, and Google’s maps function will offer drivers an eco-option to find more fuel efficient routes to destinations and a wildfire system, so that consumers can make quick and informed decisions during emergencies.”

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Chief business officer Philipp Schindler said “it’s clear that uncertainty is the new normal for the global economic outlook, as uneven access to Covid vaccines affect different countries and regions experienced rates of economic recovery. The world is in flux. When it comes to anticipating change, predicting demand and investing in innovation, businesses need as much support now as they did a year and a half ago.”

In shopping, Schindler said, “some regions were experiencing a fourfold increase in search activity. Often those searches preceded in-person visits to stores. Bricks-and-mortar isn’t dead. Instead omni-channel [shopping] is in full force.”

Alphabet also emphasized their commitment to high-quality and accurate journalism, as well as open-access to information for all. Schindler explained that within the last quarter the company has added 120 news providers to it’s 1,000 information sources on Google’s News Showcase. 

Google intends to also purchase a New York City office building for $2.1 billion in the near future, as well as another campus in Silicon Valley, as a means of motivating employees to come back to the office.

Fitbit

Google in Talks to Buy Fitbit

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Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is currently in talks to purchase the fitness-oriented smartwatch manufacturer Fitbit, according to Reuters. In response to the news, Fitbit’s stock rose by 18% before the stock was halted. If the purchase goes through, the implications for both companies as well as for the smartwatch industry generally could be significant.

While Fitbit enjoyed tremendous popularity with the release of its original fitness trackers, which introduced the concept of tracking one’s health with a smartphone-connected wearable device to many consumers, the company has since been overshadowed by the release of competing products, not the least of which is the Apple Watch. Apple’s take on the smartwatch concept includes essentially all of the fitness-related features Fitbit’s products offer, including heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking, while adding unique features and integrating deeply with the company’s iOS platform. Google, on the other hand, has found little success with its Android Wear operating system, and the Android-compatible smartwatch market in general suffers from an overabundance of mutually-incompatible software choices, including Samsung’s Tizen and Fitbit’s proprietary operating system.

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The acquisition of Fitbit, then, could potentially lead to an abandonment of the Wear OS platform, which has failed to meaningfully take off with both manufacturers and third-party software developers, and the integration of Fitbit’s software more deeply into the Android operating system, among other outcomes. Though Google has recently made strides in its hardware offerings, the company has never manufactured a smartwatch. Currently, Fitbit products are compatible with both iOS and Android devices, providing near-identical functionality on both; it remains to be seen whether a Google-owned Fitbit would continue to produce devices that work with Apple’s line of smartphones. In the past, Google has shown more of a willingness to work with its competitor’s platform than Apple has; Google has made many of its applications available on Apple’s App Store, while the inverse is not true. As such, there’s a good case to be made that a Google-owned Fitbit would continue to make fitness trackers that work with iPhones, though they may begin to include Android-only features stemming from a close relationship between the manufacturer and their potential parent company.

In a bid to maintain its relevancy amidst increasing competition from larger manufacturers, Fitbit acquired Pebble, one of the very first smartwatch manufacturers which began life on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, in 2016. This coincided with the discontinuation of all Pebble smartwatches as the original team was absorbed into the larger company, much to the disappointment of fans of the first significant smartwatch. Today’s news suggests that Google is poised to make a similar move. While the Fitbit brand still has sway over consumers, the company’s notoriety is fading, and Google is focused on unifying its hardware offerings under the Pixel brand umbrella following the announcement of its Pixel 4 smartphone, the new Pixelbook, and the upcoming Pixel Buds. Google has also recently discussed its focus on “ambient computing,” or a way of interacting with computers that blends seamlessly into the user’s ordinary life. As such, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google shutter the development of Fitbit-branded devices, instead announcing a “Pixel Watch” or something similar, which would combine the health-tracking capabilities now standard on smartwatches with new Android-specific features.

As of now, of course, it’s unclear what these features could entail, but Google’s unmatched investment in developing artificial intelligence combined with their focus on ambient computing could offer clues. For several years, Google has developed and refined its Google Assistant, which is featured on Android phones as well as the Google Home line of smart speakers; it stands to reason that the virtual assistant would make the leap to any potential Google smartwatch. Additionally, Google has debuted radar-based gesture recognition technology on the Pixel 4, which allows users to control their phone by moving their hands over the screen; a similar system, if executed effectively, would seem right at home on a Google smartwatch. As Google has a history of making surprising and innovative technological developments, particularly in the areas of neural networks and machine learning, the company has a lot of potential to make waves with its take on the smartwatch.