They need search for different reasons: it's their biggest moat against Meta by being the start page of the internet for a great many number of people. A whole

They need search for different reasons: it's their biggest moat against Meta by being the start page of the internet for a great many number of people. A whole lot of browsing sessions start with search and end with search, and this way Google can claim attribution for virtually every traffic a website gets outside of direct hits. This keeps people developing content to please Google and running ads on Google platforms to get more traffic.