As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence
into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are
crying foul.
·
Historic
Mission at Stake: When Google went public in 2004,
co-founder Larry Page
pledged to provide free, unbiased access to high-quality information by
directing users across the open web.
·
Traditional
Search Model: For two decades, Google functioned as a
gateway, sending users to millions of external websites through hyperlinks,
helping publishers, businesses, universities and merchants attract visitors.
·
AI
Transforms Search: Since 2025, Google has increasingly
replaced traditional search results with AI-generated
conversational answers through AI
Mode, powered by its Gemini chatbot.
·
New
AI Features: Google has redesigned Search to allow:
o Photo and video-based queries.
o AI agents that perform searches on users'
behalf.
o Longer, more conversational interactions
instead of keyword searches.
·
Users
Spend More Time on Google: Research indicates:
o AI queries are roughly three
times longer than traditional searches.
o Users spend 1–9
additional minutes in AI Mode.
o One study found about
75% of AI Mode sessions ended without users visiting external websites.
·
Declining
Website Traffic: Publishers, businesses, banks and other
website operators report significant declines in search traffic because users
increasingly consume Google's AI summaries instead of clicking links.
·
"Google
Zero" Becoming Reality: Technology publishers
warn that the long-predicted "Google
Zero"—where Google sends virtually no
traffic to publishers—is rapidly materializing with AI-powered search.
·
Threat
to the Open Web: Critics argue AI search undermines the
original vision of the World Wide Web as an interconnected network where users
freely navigate among independent websites.
·
Growing
"Walled Garden": Like ecosystems built
by Apple and Meta, Google's AI search increasingly keeps users inside its own
platform instead of directing them to external content.
·
Tim
Berners-Lee's Warning: The inventor of the
World Wide Web argues AI is accelerating the concentration of online activity
within large technology platforms at the expense of the open internet.
·
Google
Rejects the Criticism: Google maintains that:
o It still sends billions
of clicks to websites every week.
o Reports of collapsing traffic rely on
flawed methodologies.
o The company remains committed to
supporting the health of the web ecosystem.
·
Measures
to Support Publishers: Google has introduced
features such as:
o Website previews in AI responses.
o "Preferred Sources" for users to
prioritize trusted news outlets.
o New publisher profiles to improve
discoverability.
·
Independent
Data Shows Traffic Declines: According to
Cloudflare:
o More than 50%
of internet traffic is now generated by bots rather than humans.
o Human visits to finance, publishing and
retail websites fell nearly 40% between June 2025 and April
2026.
·
Wikipedia
Also Affected:
o Human visits declined about 8% over
the past year.
o AI bots increasingly scrape Wikipedia's
content for training.
o Wikimedia has begun charging AI companies
for commercial access to its data.
·
Regulatory
Intervention: Britain's Competition and Markets
Authority has required Google to:
o Provide clearer attribution and links in
AI-generated answers.
o Allow websites to opt out of AI summaries.
o Apply these changes globally across
Search.
·
Publishers
Adapt: Media companies are diversifying beyond
Google search through:
o Podcasts.
o Mobile apps.
o Social media.
o Alternative business models and
consolidation.
·
Vox
Media Example: Falling search traffic contributed to Vox
Media's decision to sell several publications, including The
Verge, to Penske Media.
·
Marks
one of the most significant transformations in internet search since Google's
founding.
·
Raises
concerns that AI-powered search could weaken the economic model supporting
independent websites and digital publishers.
·
Highlights
growing tensions between AI innovation, platform dominance, publisher
sustainability and regulatory oversight.
·
Signals
a broader shift from the open web
toward AI-driven, platform-centric information ecosystems where users
increasingly receive answers without leaving the search platform.
[ABS News Service/21.07.2026]
When
Google prepared to go public in 2004, Larry Page, a co-founder of the company, wrote
a letter to shareholders describing the internet firm’s responsibility to the world.
“We
believe a well-functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access
to high-quality information,” Mr. Page said.
Google
fulfilled that responsibility by acting as a gateway to the internet. It answered
people’s search queries with lists of hyperlinks, pushing users out to what is known
as the “open web” — the millions of websites run by merchants, publishers, universities
and others — for more information. In the ensuing decades, Google became one of
the planet’s richest and most powerful companies by directing people to the vastness
of the open web.
Now
in the age of artificial intelligence, Google appears to be shrinking back from
the open web — and may be imperiling it.
Since
last year, the Silicon Valley giant has revamped its search with A.I. It introduced
AI Mode, which replaces search results of hyperlinks with conversational responses
written by Gemini, its A.I. chatbot. Most recently, Google changed its iconic search
box for the first time in 25 years so that people could add photos and videos to
their queries and assign A.I. “agents” to run searches for them.
Google
last year introduced AI Mode, which replaces search results of hyperlinks with conversational
responses written by Gemini, its A.I. chatbot.CreditCredit...Video
by Kelsey Mcclellan For The New York Times
The
effect of these moves is becoming clear: People are spending more time with Google
than ever.
Users
are writing queries three times as long as the keyword-heavy questions they asked
of traditional searches, Google said at its developer conference in May. People
are spending one to nine more minutes in AI Mode than on traditional Google searches,
according to three studies from researchers tallied by The New York Times. One October
study from Growth Memo, a newsletter focused on search and marketing, found that
in about 75 percent of sessions, users never left AI Mode for the web.
For
publishers, businesses, banks and others that relied on Google to funnel its billions
of users to their websites, the impact has been unmistakable as the company has
increasingly incorporated A.I. into search. Google’s users are no longer leaving
Google after a search and are just reading its A.I.-generated answers, they said,
which means fewer people are coming to their websites and search traffic has dropped.
Nilay
Patel, the editor in chief of the technology website The Verge, has warned publishers
for years that they would face “Google Zero,” a moment when traffic from Google
would plummet to nothing.
“For
publishers, Google Zero is already here,” he said. “It wasn’t until AI Mode arrived
that people could see that the slow creep was about to hit a tipping point.”
The
changes threaten the open web and show how rapidly A.I. has upended the technology
landscape. Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited with inventing the World
Wide Web in 1989, had envisioned the web as a tool for global collaboration without
borders, where people could launch their own websites and flit freely among sites
created by others.
Much
of that vision has been chipped away over the years, as tech behemoths like Apple
and Meta created “walled gardens,” or tech ecosystems where users could get almost
everything they needed under one roof. Now A.I. has indisputably accelerated that
trajectory, Mr. Berners-Lee said in a 2024 essay.
Tech
companies have built empires that locked users in and were focused on maximizing
profit instead of enhancing public utility, Mr. Berners-Lee wrote. “The rapid advancement
of A.I. has exacerbated these concerns,” he added, “proving that issues on the web
are not isolated but rather deeply intertwined with emerging technologies.”
Google
has denied that it is endangering the open web. In a blog post last August, Liz
Reid, a vice president of search, said that the company’s ethos had not changed
and that it was sending out a “relatively stable” number of clicks numbering in
the billions. Reports of a decline in search traffic were “inaccurate” and relied
on “flawed methodologies,” she said.
“We
care passionately — perhaps more than any other company — about the health of the
web ecosystem,” Ms. Reid said.
Since
publishing that blog post, Google has added more A.I. to search. It also created
some features intended to push users out of AI Mode and into the broader web, including
previews of websites to some responses and a tool that lets people set “preferred
sources” so that A.I. refers to their favorite news outlets
more frequently. The company also created a profile that helps publishers and creators
promote their work in search.
“Google’s
AI Search features send billions of clicks to the web every week, meeting people’s
evolving preferences for how they want to find information while driving significant
traffic to websites,” a Google spokesman said in a statement, adding that the company’s
A.I. features highlight links to the web.
He
said the study that found that users stayed in AI Mode 75 percent of the time was
flawed because it relied on a small sample size and gave users specific tasks that
did not reflect normal user behavior.
Even
so, searches are increasingly being performed by A.I. chatbots while the number
of people visiting websites is falling, according to Cloudflare, a content delivery
network company. While someone might once have Googled a soccer player’s World Cup
performance and clicked to a sports site or a social media thread for commentary,
a bot now crawls the web for that information and returns the player’s statistics
to the user, who stays on Google.
In
total, more than 50 percent of web traffic is now nonhuman, Cloudflare said. Between
June 2025 and April 2026, human traffic to websites of businesses in industries
like finance, publishing and retail dropped nearly 40 percent, it added.
The
web’s fundamental economic model has changed, Cloudflare said, and chatbot-style
search tools like Google’s could put the open web in peril if left unchecked.
Google’s
A.I., along with other popular chatbots, have hit Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation,
which manages the online encyclopedia, said it had experienced
an 8 percent decline in human visitors to its site over the past year. At the same
time, it has seen an increase in bots scraping its site for data to train A.I. models.
“My
work is to ensure that people don’t forget about us because Google’s user interface
changed,” said Selena Deckelmann, the Wikimedia Foundation’s chief product and technology
officer.
Wikipedia
has started promoting its own app and social media channels to establish connections
with readers outside Google’s ecosystem, she said. It also began charging Google
and other A.I. firms for access to its data for training.
Last
month, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority mandated that Google change its
A.I. search tools in the United Kingdom to address publishers’ concerns. The regulator
said Google must include clear links to attribute content in chatbot responses,
a move intended to help send traffic to websites. The company is also required to
allow website operators to opt out of having their content appear in A.I. summaries,
and is making the changes across search globally.
For
some open web proponents, the fact that people can leave Google’s ecosystem remains
enough.
“Whether
it uses a traditional search method or A.I., I think Google is still facilitating
access to the open internet,” said Tori Noble, a staff attorney at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on defending civil liberties online. “It’s
not a closed universe” compared with walled gardens like Facebook, which requires
a login for access, she added.
That’s
little comfort to some website operators.
In
May, Vox Media, which owns The Verge and other publications, began selling some
of its sites. Jim Bankoff, Vox Media’s chief executive, said the “decimation of
search traffic” had influenced his decision to explore other ways of reaching readers,
like a podcast network, and ultimately to sell about half of the company to James
Murdoch. In June, The Verge and several other Vox Media websites were sold to Penske
Media.
Google
has often said it was “sending out more traffic and the web is bigger than ever,”
Mr. Patel said. “And then right next to that is a bunch of publishers whose businesses
are getting destroyed.”