RIP Snapchat? Can It Survive a Bad, Bad Redesign and Google’s New, Rival "Stories"?

Will this be the thing to finally bust that Snapchat ghost?

The internet has been pre-emptively predicting Snapchat’s death for years (full disclosure: we incorrectly pegged their imminent demise in November of 2015, July of 2016, May of 2017 and, most recently, January of 2018, when a misguided redesign hid your friends’ stories).

But it’s still wildly used across the globe (two thirds of students use it every day, according to our recent survey), and when it goes down for even a couple hours, people lose their mind.

Snap Inc.’s stock also surged earlier this month, after reporting unexpectedly higher earnings, and they’re planning to tempt back influencers and celebrities from Instagram with better analytic tools. Hell, Michael Freaking Haneke just made a movie about it.

And yet, once again, we must pull out the "RIP Snapchat" placard, based on news coming from one of the most monstrous tech giants in the world: Google.

In a new Google Developers blog post, the monolithic search engine announced AMP Stories, which will allow content publishers the opportunity to share “visually rich, tap-through stories”).

Let this chipper video illustrate it for you:

Though Google has struggled in the social media space previously (‘member Google+?), the introduction of stories to their news publishing platform undeniably erodes Snapchat’s brand even further. After all, if there’s nothing ‘special’ about Snapchat, and you can get everything it offers—and more—across Instagram, Facebook and Google—will users still want to return?

Or maybe there’s still something unique about Snapchat that hasn’t yet been plundered by its rivals: the ephemeral, disappearing nature of its content.

With one million angry users begging Snapchat to roll back their most recent update, their future may indeed hang in the balance of the next few months.

And so, we watch on, still wondering if Snapchat will one day disappear as suddenly as their snaps.

Meanwhile, Google’s stories are now available for everyone via a developer preview, and you can already see them in your Google search results.

Photo: YouTube (The AMP Channel) / Snapchat / iStock.com/mattjeacock