Good morning,
You've probably seen them in the wild: Google's AI Overviews. A little box that gives you the answer you're searching, right there – no need to visit a pesky news, travel or shopping site.
I'm not even going to bother arguing why this little box amounts to theft of content, you're smart enough to figure that bit out.
What I will argue is that this move might potentially open the search (or I guess now 'answer') company to antitrust cases. You see, Google was built upon a bargain with the open web – websites give it content to display and run ads on, Google returns traffic that generates sales or news subscriptions.
But slowly, it thrust upon websites a ever-tightening noose; Google demands more content to be made available on its search page, at the penalty of not showing up at all in search results (where it has a near monopoly), where it still delivered a dwindling number of visitors.
Now, with AI Overviews, we enter the 'zero click' search era – in which the bargain is no more. We as a publisher still provide it with content to show if a user wants to know about the EU, but we get nothing in return. Worse, if we don't give it what it wants, we don't show up at all.
Abuse of market power, anyone?
In the US, the first lawsuit following this line argument is underway. If anyone has a bag of money to throw at publishers, I'm sure we'd be happy to follow.
– Alejandro Tauber, publisher
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
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