--- title: "Will AI Kill Google? Why Google Won't Be the Next Kodak" description: "Kodak buried the digital camera, Blockbuster turned down Netflix and Nokia laughed at the iPhone. Why I think Google built the thing that could have killed it." url: https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney/predictions/google-wont-be-kodak language: en updated: 2026-10-16 publisher: Wonder Works (Wonder Works Design Ltd), Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria --- [Home](https://wonderworksdesign.net/)[Colin Rooney](https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney)[Colin's Predictions](https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney/predictions) 03Called on **16 Oct 2026**Still open # Google won't be Kodak [Colin Rooney](https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney)Co-founder, Wonder Works · my opinion, not Wonder Works advice ![Colin Rooney sitting on a wooden stool, leaning in](https://wonderworksdesign.net/media/colin-sitting-stool.webp) Kodak I find fascinating, because we always look at these massive corporate businesses and assume they're on it. Kodak didn't just dismiss digital, they could have been the first. One of their own engineers, Steve Sasson, [built the first digital camera in 1975](https://petapixel.com/2017/09/21/kodak-said-digital-photography-1975/), and the bosses were convinced that "no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set". So they buried it to protect film, and digital was the very thing that finished them off. Kodak went bankrupt in 2012. Mad! ## Too fixed on the now Blockbuster should have been Netflix. In 2000, [Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/22/how-netflix-almost-lost-the-movie-rental-wars-to-blockbuster.html), and Blockbuster said no. At its peak it had around 9,000 stores and $6 billion a year coming in, and it went bankrupt in 2010. Again, they were too focused on what they had and protected that. Nokia, the biggest phone manufacturer on the planet, [selling 40% of all the phones in the world at the end of 2007](https://www.theregister.com/2008/01/24/sa_q4_phone_figures/), looked at the iPhone and said it won't work. It [sold its phone business to Microsoft in 2014](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2014/4/26/nokia-sells-mobile-phone-unit-to-microsoft), and now it's tiny and not even considered. All pioneers who were too fixed on the now, and on DATA! But data is flawed. The best ones innovate. Apple started with a computer that, to be fair, wasn't that good, and now it's more than a brand, it's part of our lives. ## That's the opposite of Kodak So why won't Google be Kodak? I came off Google because it never gave me what we all need. We now expect fast information, and I was prepared to go through multiple websites to get what I needed to know, but I hated that even the first page was full of sponsored links, not because they were the best information, but because someone paid for it. Even the organic results didn't mean the best information, it just meant they were very good at SEO. Now I use it more than ever. The AI mode gives me the information I want, and fast. I can talk to the search instead of searching through endless sponsored links and crappy affiliate "best of" websites. That's the opposite of Kodak. Google had more to lose than anyone from people asking instead of searching, and instead of burying it, they built it themselves. Google says its AI mode has passed a billion people a month, and its search business was still growing, [up 17% on the year, $63.3 billion in three months](https://www.digitalapplied.com/blog/alphabet-q2-2026-earnings-search-ads-ai-overviews). > Google had more to lose than anyone from people asking instead of searching, and instead of burying it, they built it themselves. ## The right ones win So who wins? The right ones win and the right people lose. We are sadly getting used to bullshit. Social media has become our news, written mostly by opinions and tactics to get us hooked. But we seem to be moving into trusted information, to a point, where Google's AI and other AI can find the honest things we are looking for, and not from a single source of truth, but from multiple sources on the information and businesses we are "searching" for. The genuine, honest businesses win, and the ones trying to beat the system lose. And look, I'm not naive, people will trick this system and take advantage, but it's getting harder, and so it should. The honest ones with good intentions will hopefully come out on top. ## Then the contradictions kick in Business profiles are super important, absolutely, and not just Google's, but they've also created new problems. As business owners we need to stay on top of them, updating information in real time, or we risk contradicting ourselves. I have it with my own. I update the website, forget to update the Google Business Profile or one of the other platforms, and then the contradictions kick in. It's much easier now if you use the tools available to you. I have an AI agent that spots this, so the errors have become fewer and fewer. And it's happening now, faster than at any point in history, so we live in prediction world, and I love it. ## Updates, newest first 16 Oct 2026The original call This is the prediction as I made it that day. When something changes, I add a dated update here and leave the original as it is. ### In this piece 1. Too fixed on the now 2. That's the opposite of Kodak 3. The right ones win 4. Then the contradictions kick in ### How I mark these - Happening - Still open - Proved wrong ### Linked predictions - [SEO is named after something nobody does anymore](https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney/predictions/seo-named-after-something-nobody-does) - [“I don't need a website, that's what ChatGPT is for”](https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney/predictions/i-dont-need-a-website-thats-what-chatgpt-is-for) ### All of them - [← Back to the logbook](https://wonderworksdesign.net/authors/colin-rooney/predictions)