Google Admits that Yes, The Open Web is In Rapid Decline

Google has long denied that its AI is killing the open web, but recently, they admitted that the open web is dying.

Last year, I wrote an article raising the alarm about Google’s AI Overview. Specifically, it has the ability to summarize content and present it to the user. This had the potential of robbing content producers of web traffic they need to survive and could spark rapid declines in web traffic for all websites. This given the knowledge that much of the open web relies on Google traffic for discoverability purposes.

Like most sensible warnings these days, though, those warnings also largely fell on deaf ears as much of the attention in tech focused on chasing the social media boogyman or trying to find various ways of buying into the hype of generative AI like ChatGPT such as the conspiracy theory of how generative AI was somehow going to cause the extinction of humanity. It’s extremely frustrating just how insanely stupid the mainstream media has become over the last decade where their “professional” work is worse than your average crackpot sitting on a park bench on the city streets muttering about the end of times being just around the corner, but here we are.

So, in an infuriating way, it’s not a surprise that people didn’t pick up on my warnings, but like so much of my other writing, reality ends up finding a way to make itself known. In the months since, I noticed a rapid decline of web traffic to Freezenet. It gradually went from a somewhat healthy 250-400 views per day to 50-75 views per day over the period of several months. For now, it seems to have settled on that bottom spectrum for the most part, though occasionally spiking all the way up to 100 views. This wasn’t from a lack of high quality content or the site simply falling off for normal market reason, but the intervention of AI Overview. So, I knew that other sites were likely experiencing the same sort of thing.

Of course, while most were ignoring the dropping of traffic, Google seemingly felt like they were getting away with hoarding the clicks for themselves and, as a result, there was discussion of implementing AI only search results back in March. Again, I warned about this, pointing out that this will wipe out what little remaining traffic is coming from Google, but like the previous warning before, it went ignored despite the growing evidence of its negative impact. One possibility was that ego was playing a role in this in that few websites were willing to admit that their traffic was getting absolutely pummelled all this time and instead project an image that they are still as popular as ever while quietly hoping the traffic would one day come back (spoiler alert: it isn’t going to from search).

In May, Cloudflare conducted some research to find out if Google’s AI Overview was having a negative impact on web traffic. The results for them were shocking as huge swaths of traffic to third party websites were getting systematically wiped out. In response, they also raised the alarm that we are heading into a “zero click” internet. The warnings confirmed what I had been saying all along, but the findings only garnered a small amount of attention from the odd publication here and there. It still wasn’t necessarily being treated seriously even though the evidence was, in fact, piling up confirming what I had been saying all along.

Then, something funny started happening. It seemed that some publications started realizing that their traffic was nuked and not coming back. So, a few intrepid journalists decided to do some digging and, unsurprisingly, discovered that Google’s AI Overview was the culprit. The narrative at the time was that Google was made a small change and it is having a noticeable impact on traffic. The narrative grossly under-reports the seriousness of the situation, but it was vindicating to see that there were more and more that were finally taking notice after a whole year.

By July, an anti trust complaint was lodged against Google over this practice, pointing out that Google’s changes were having a negative impact across multiple industries. This is good because it appears that Google was, in fact, moving ahead with AI only search as they trial run their AI search within 180 countries. It was what was feared in the past and, today, if you look on Google, you’ll see an AI Mode tab now, indicating that this is, in fact, the direction Google is taking things. That development was seemingly showcased exclusively on search engine news sites as others, apart from us, simply payed little attention to that development.

Google, for its part, has been denying that its AI is having an impact on search traffic. The claim was that there was absolutely no impact on search at all. However, in a recent court filing, Google ended up flatly admitting that, yes, the open web is currently experiencing a death spiral. From Futurism:

In a major change in tune, Google has admitted that the “open web is already in rapid decline” — despite being adamant for months that the “web is thriving.”

As first spotted by The Verge, the tech giant attempted to dissuade regulators from breaking up its advertising tech business, arguing that doing so would harm publishers who rely on advertising revenue.

Google argued that splitting up its ad business would “only accelerate” the open web’s disintegration ahead of an antitrust trial in a DC court.

It’s a peculiar admission, especially considering it’s in Google’s best interest to downplay the sizable role it plays in the traditional ecosystem of the web. The company has been caught up in several antitrust lawsuits, with regulators finding that it was behaving anti-competitively, using its influence to assume an unprecedented level of control over the open web.

It’s… quite the admission, though the article would later also note that Google attempted to walk back those comments and argued that the comments were “cherry-picked” and when they said the “open web”, they were really meaning, uh, displays and advertising and… stuff… and not actually the open web. Yup, that’s the ticket! When they said “open web”, they didn’t really mean the “open web”, just a different “open web” that means something totally different to them personally and not what us peons refer to as the “open web”. That makes perfect sense, right? RIGHT???

In all likelihood, this was an accidental admission as they try to navigate all the antitrust lawsuits they incurred over the years. The evidence has long been quite clear that the deployment of AI in Google’s services has resulted in a steep decline in traffic. As Google moves further into AI, what trickle is left is likely going to get shut off almost completely, choking off independent sites like ours as a mass die-off continues.

I’m personally not buying the walk back at all. The evidence has long been clear that Google’s AI Overview is absolutely slaughtering the traffic to websites. AI Mode has the potential to snuff out whats left, leaving websites to fend for themselves as users suddenly no longer see the sites visibility anywhere. Google wants to hoard the clicks for themselves as they try and dissuade people from clicking off of their search engine – something that has greatly contributed to the overall health of the open web in the past. They know too few people are going to hop onto alternatives and just assume their AI is perfect in every way. Unless something dramatic changes the course of events, things are going to get uglier and uglier for publishers in general.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.