Google Scholar Is Doomed

"Academia is dependent on Google Scholar for many of its activities. The main features that keep academics in a bind is not so much document search, but the author profiles and bibliometrics. We have built entire research infrastructures around this free service. Universities use Scholar's metrics for faculty evaluation, tenure decisions, and grant applications. Library instruction programs teach it. Promotion committees rely on it. International repositories integrate with it. We treat it like it's here to stay, but looking at the Google graveyard should give us pause...

Google Scholar makes exactly zero dollars. It does not charge for services, offer premium tiers, or run ads. It also serves a small, specialised audience that doesn't drive Google's core business. In corporate terms, that makes it a "cost center"...

Google's strategic transformation into an AI-first company fundamentally conflicts with maintaining niche academic services like Scholar. The company has unified all AI efforts under the Gemini brand, with CEO Sundar Pichai stating they're "rethinking all products for an AI-driven future."...

But wait - if Scholar is so doomed, why has it survived this long? Because there are some genuine reasons to keep Google Scholar, at least for now.

Despite not turning a direct profit, Scholar does present some value for Google. Academic institutions effectively compel researchers to use Google Scholar by making visibility and citation metrics essential for promotions and grant funding. Yet this participation requires researchers to create Google accounts and consent to the company's data collection and processing policies. This presents a commercial dimension to the product aligned with Google's business model of surveillance, insights, and behavioral advertising.

Google enjoys an immense amount of power in the scholarly community, and Google Scholar has a gatekeeping role, having "leveraged its system of citation counting into a tool that coordinates the scholarly economy".

Google Scholar represents a successful example of platform capitalism applied to academic infrastructure, providing value to researchers while advancing Google's strategic interests through data collection, brand enhancement, and ecosystem control. This is why it has lasted so long...

Google celebrated Scholar's 20th anniversary in 2024 with some cute blog posts and launching of minor AI features. But you know what they didn't provide? Any concrete commitment to funding, strategic priority, or long-term sustainability..."

https://hannahshelley.neocities.org/blog/2025_08_13_GoogleScholar