Google’s search dominance leaves sites little choice on AI scraping

Google’s dominance in search – which a US federal court ruled last week is an illegal monopoly – is giving it a decisive advantage in the brewing AI wars, which search startups and publishers say is unfair as the industry takes shape. — AFP

The convenient artificial intelligence answers Google now puts at the top of its search results come at steep cost to websites that users would otherwise visit. But many site owners say they can’t afford to block Google’s AI from summarising their content.

That’s because the Google tool that sifts through web content to come up with its AI answers is the same one that keeps track of web pages for search results, according to publishers. Blocking Alphabet Inc’s Google the way sites have blocked some of its AI competitors would also hamper a site’s ability to be discovered online.