The tech that defined the modern internet is changing, and Silicon Valley is finally admitting it

People aren’t friending each other as much on Facebook these days. The iPhone might not feel necessary in a decade. And Google searches on one of the world’s most popular smartphones are declining. Those were some of the unusually frank admissions from two separate antitrust trials against Meta and Google. It was a rare acknowledgement from tech leaders that the once-cutting edge products their companies were founded on could someday lose their relevance. Silicon Valley prides itself on innovation, change and a constant quest to find “the next big thing.” The race for relevance is a constant one. Still, the admissions underscore the mounting pressure tech giants face amid new threats from artificial intelligence and new social media apps – and how quickly any product can get left behind. Apple did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. A Google spokesperson pointed to the company’s public statements, while a Meta spokesperson directed CNN to specific responses from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s courtroom testimony. The three tech giants helped shape the modern web over the last two decades. Google’s search engine triumphed in the late 1990s and early 2000s due to its system of ranking results by relevance and importance rather than sorting them by topic. And Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is largely responsible for turning social platforms into an addictive feed of likes, comments and other interactions. Fueling both of those trends was the smartphone, allowing users to access these services from almost anywhere, which Apple set the stage for with the first iPhone in 2007. The success of those products catapulted Apple, Google and Meta to mega-valuations. But during courtroom testimony, executives indicated consumers are losing interest in some of the very tasks Facebook and Google were initially built for. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, revealed last week that Google search queries on its devices decreased for the first time last month, according to Bloomberg. The comments came during his testimony in the Justice Department’s antitrust trial against Google. (Google pays Apple to be the default search engine in the iPhone maker’s Safari browser.) It’s another sign that consumers may be shifting to AI chatbots to fulfill some of the duties of a traditional search engine. Market research firm Gartner estimated last year that search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026 as consumers gravitate toward AI tools. Google said in a statement on Wednesday that it continues “to see overall query growth in search,” and that includes “an increase in total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms.” Meta, too, is seeing consumers shift away from its original use case: adding friends and sharing content. “The amount that people are sharing with friends on Facebook, especially, has been declining,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an April trial for an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission. “Even the amount of new friends that people add … I think has been declining. But I don’t know the exact numbers.” Instead, Zuckerberg said the company has seen a big boost in direct messages. Zuckerberg’s comments come as research shows Facebook is falling behind other online platforms with younger crowds. A Pew Research Center report from December found that Facebook usage has dropped off over the last 10 years, with just 32% of teens saying they use what was previously Meta’s namesake social network. That compares to 71% in 2014 and 2015, although teens still use Instagram frequently. Meta has aggressively shaped its apps to keep up with new trends. In 2013, Facebook failed to buy Snapchat, but about three years later it introduced its own alternative in Instagram Stories. Instagram’s short-form video feed, known as Reels, came to take on TikTok in 2020, and Zuckerberg said in his testimony that video content is where people are spending most of their time on Facebook these days. Even the iPhone may be at risk of losing favor over the next decade, an Apple executive said. “You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as it sounds,” Apple’s Cue said during his courtroom testimony in the Google trial, according to Bloomberg. With 19% of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2025, according to the International Data Corporation, Apple’s iPhone is the world’s second most popular smartphone brand. But Apple, along with other tech behemoths, is determined to figure out what comes next. And the answer could be smart glasses that use AI to analyze the world around you to execute tasks without reaching for your phone — a vision that Meta, Samsung and Google are already betting on. Zuckerberg said in his testimony that he believes consumers will eventually interact with content through “smart glasses and holograms,” removing the need to use a “glowing rectangle” to access digital platforms. Amazon’s head of devices and services Panos Panay also didn’t rule out the possibility of camera-equipped Alexa glasses similar to those offered by Meta in a February CNN interview. Apple, too, believes the next step in computing will involve devices worn on the face, as evidenced by the $3,500 Vision Pro. That device, while niche, could be a precursor to the types of smart glasses Apple’s rivals are working on or currently selling. At the same time, consumers aren’t upgrading their phones as frequently now that mobile devices no longer dramatically change each year. For now, consumers will continue scrolling through Instagram and typing Google Search queries on their iPhones. And change is a good thing for corporate giants like these; it lets them show Wall Street there’s still room to grow while boosting their arguments to lawmakers that they face stiff competition. What’s changing, though, is that the tech companies that ruled the early 2000s and 2010s may have to fight a bit harder to stay ahead of the curve.