According to a Google official, the threat posed by TikTok to Google’s business is not simply restricted to YouTube; other essential Google services, such as Search and Maps, are also being affected.

TechCrunch recently claimed that Google’s Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan, who oversees the Knowledge and Information organisation, mentioned the well-known social media platforms as part of a larger discussion about the company’s future products and use of artificial intelligence (AI) at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference. He casually mentioned that younger users were now frequently using applications like Instagram and TikTok instead of Google Search or Maps for discovery during a talk about the evolution of search.

“We keep learning, over and over again, that new Internet users do not have the expectations and the mindset that we have become accustomed to,” Raghavan was quoted as saying. He also added that “the queries they ask are completely different”. According to the survey, he said that these people don’t frequently enter keywords but instead seek content in creative, absorbing ways. Raghavan’s views were based on internal data that included a poll of US users between the ages of 18 and 24, the tech giant has acknowledged to the tech website.

“In our studies, something like almost 40 per cent of young people, when they are looking for a place for lunch, do not go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram”