AI, and more specifically Google, is breaking the Internet as we know it today. In this post, Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, has once again emphasised that quality content creators are not being adequately protected. According to this executive, when a search engine integrates AI in its current form, it practically sends no traffic back to the source, contradicting what Google claims.
Although Google claims that people search more and that it sends more traffic to a wider variety of sources, the truth is that it is doing precisely the opposite, according to various studies and Cloudflare data. What is actually happening is that AI Overviews is drastically cutting traffic to quality sources, and the forthcoming AI mode, a sort of ChatGPT, could be even more damaging to the open Internet we have known until now. Users settle for the AI-generated answer—true or not—and few dig any deeper.
“The current implementation of AI is an existential danger to the Internet as we know it”. If users stop visiting original sources, creating new content ceases to be profitable and only a handful of revenue streams can continue to pay for interest-driven journalism.
We are, without doubt, at a crucial moment for the Internet.
With data in hand, Prince states that ten years ago Google sent one visitor to the source of the information for every two pages it crawled. Six months ago that figure was one visitor for every six crawls, but today, with the first introduction of AI into its products, it sends one user to the source for every 18 pages crawled. In other words, in six months referral traffic has become three times worse, according to Prince.
Now, instead of showing links, Google answers directly on the page using content extracted and summarised from various sites, without the reader clicking. And although Google continues to monetise those pages with ads, the original creators no longer receive visits.
“A decade ago, Google answered 25 % of queries directly.” Six months ago that number rose to 75 %. Today it is probably 90 %, according to Prince.
There cannot be a market without scarcity. Sam Altman (OpenAI) has said that creators must be compensated, but you cannot charge Sam and give the content away to everyone else. We need to create scarcity: block bots and restrict unauthorised access to content. Only then can there be a fair negotiation. Because if no one has an incentive to create content, no one will. And if that happens, the Internet as we know it will disappear.
- Original article written in Spanish, translated with chatGPT and reviewed in English by Jorge Mediavilla.
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