Publishers are worried due to Google’s monopoly
The coming times are unlikely to be particularly pleasant for Google. After a groundbreaking ruling addressed the company’s monopoly position, new allegations are already emerging: publishers feel blackmailed by Google’s AI ambitions.
Google wants more
In recent months, the company has repeatedly emphasized how important AI features are for the further development of search results. In concrete terms, this means that questions that a user asks the search engine will increasingly be answered directly with AI-generated information in the future.
While Google uses a separate crawler for its AI chatbot Gemini, the Googlebot covers both AI-generated answers and normal search results. This gives Google an almost unlimited position of power over publishers who want to attract users with their own information offerings, according to a report by the news agency Bloomberg emerges.
This is because publishers are effectively forced to let Googlebot analyze the information presented on their websites. This would then also be used for AI-generated answers in the search results, which are essentially an improved version of the question-and-answer boxes already integrated into the hit lists. The result of this: users are increasingly provided with the information they need directly in the search results and can avoid the subsequent click to visit the respective website.
This would lead to a decline in visitors and thus also revenue for publishers’ offers – Estimates assume that search engine traffic would drop by 20 to 60 percent. If they deny Google access to the content, however, they will no longer appear in the search results and will lose just as many users and revenue – and due to Google’s monopoly position, this can quickly become a threat to their existence.
The market regulates nothing
Google’s competitors can hardly exert a mitigating effect here through the much-vaunted market mechanisms, as they are simply starting from a much worse position. An AI start-up that wanted to offer similar answer options and kept the interests of all sides in mind, for example, would simply have the disadvantage of having to pay for the information it needed – Google, on the other hand, can access it for free with its bot.
The situation has led to publishers, competing search engines and AI start-ups pinning their hopes on the US Department of Justice. The concerns about AI training via the Googlebot have already been brought to the attention of the US Department of Justice and are likely to represent another building block in the decision as to whether milder means are sufficient to break Google’s monopoly position or whether the company really does have to be broken up.
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