A recent antitrust filing has raised a familiar but increasingly urgent accusation: Google is allegedly cannibalizing publisher traffic by using their content to power AI-generated results while reducing the need for users to click through to the original sources.
This isn’t a new fear, but AI has made the tension impossible to ignore. For decades, the web worked on an implicit exchange. Publishers created content, search engines sent traffic, and that traffic funded the ecosystem through ads, subscriptions, and visibility. The relationship was never perfectly balanced, but the direction of value was clear: discovery led to clicks.
AI-driven results complicate that model.
When a search interface starts summarizing, synthesizing, and answering directly on the results page, the user journey changes. The information is still coming from somewhere, but the economic loop becomes weaker. The publisher provides the raw material, while the platform captures more of the engagement and monetization.
That is the core of the cannibalization argument: the content is being used, but the referral is shrinking.
This is not just a technical SEO discussion. It’s a business model question. If AI results become the default consumption layer, then attribution becomes optional, traffic becomes secondary, and the incentive to publish high-quality information starts to erode.
And this is where the debate moves beyond “AI ethics” into something more structural: sustainability.
Because the open web does not run on summaries. It runs on investment. Reporting, research, expertise, niche publishing — all of it requires funding. If the reward for creating content disappears upstream, the supply of trustworthy information will eventually decline downstream.
Google’s position, of course, is that AI results still rely on classic retrieval and ranking systems, and that sources remain part of the ecosystem. But publishers are increasingly asking a blunt question: being “included” in an AI answer is not the same as being visited.
The web has always been shaped by intermediaries, but AI changes the nature of intermediation. Search was a gateway. AI is becoming a destination.
So what happens next?
Publishers will likely be forced to adapt in several ways: building stronger direct audiences, creating content that cannot be fully commoditized into snippets, exploring licensing models, and reinforcing brand/entity recognition so that attribution becomes harder to ignore.
But the larger issue remains unresolved: if AI becomes the primary interface to information, the value exchange that built the web may need to be renegotiated.
The antitrust filing is only one legal signal, but it reflects a broader reality: AI search is not just a product evolution. It is a redistribution of attention, traffic, and revenue.
And the open question is simple:
Can the open web survive if answers remain on-platform?
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