Big Tech has always tried to own the open web. With AI, it could succeed

A few weeks before a U.S. court ruled that Google monopolized search, the European Commission had preliminarily found that Google Search was noncompliant with the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Any attempt to rein in Big Tech is welcome, but we knew Google Search was anticompetitive a decade ago.

Today, I’d argue the biggest threat to publishers’ independence and financial viability doesn’t come from Google’s dominance in search, at least not directly.

It comes from AI and from how it is already changing the future of search.

How AI is changing search

AI-generated summaries in Google Search push publisher links further down the page, reducing visibility and engagement. Tests show that even when citations are provided, they are often minimized or buried beneath Google-owned results.

The lack of transparency only adds to the challenge. Traffic from AI Overviews isn’t separated from regular search traffic in Google Analytics or Search Console, leaving publishers in the dark about how users engage with their content and whether their monetization strategies need to pivot.

In addition, there are broader issues with AI.

Many media companies say generative AI models have been trained on the intellectual property of millions of publishers, authors and artists without permission or compensation. This allegedly vast and ongoing extraction of creative work has fueled generative AI’s rapid rise, while those who create the content AI relies on are often left at a disadvantage.

Fundamentally, if copyright law was to be overturned for the benefit of AI companies, the entire notion of intellectual property — and the economy it underpins — would fall apart.

So, what can publishers do?

Adopt AI in your favor

Successful publishers are diversifying their reach and expanding their content strategy across newsletters, podcasts, video platforms and social media to meet their current and potential audiences wherever they are.

This is one area where AI is a friend rather than a foe, with AI tools able to do much of the heavy lifting in content production and repurposing that often kept channel diversification out of reach for smaller, resource-light publications, while allowing larger publications to scale up even further.

On the business strategy side of things, even before AI Overviews, savvy publishers learned not to put too many eggs in the search traffic basket, with many pivoting to audience loyalty over fleeting SEO-driven visits.

Reader-funded models such as subscriptions, memberships and premium content not only secure a loyal audience base but also diversify revenue away from channels that are vulnerable to algorithmic changes.

Protect your IP

Publishers must recognize their leverage, whether through challenges or deals with AI companies, while also advocating for regulatory frameworks that enforce transparency in AI training data usage to ensure fair compensation for content creators.

Excluding AI crawlers from their robots.txt and negotiating licensing agreements are immediate steps publishers can take (though the former does not guarantee their content will not be used, perhaps as a basis for further copyright claims down the line).

While The New York Times is pursuing legal action against OpenAI, many other publishers have opted to sign deals, such as News Corp’s $250 million licensing deal with the same company The New York Times is challenging.

Beneath the surface of copyright cases and licensing deals is a fact that may prove to be the arrow in publishers’ quiver: AI companies need content creators.

AI may be powerful, but it can’t interact with the “real world,” where the stories that become news actually happen. It can’t offer an expert opinion, review a piece of art or tell you how food tastes.

Without fair remuneration for those who do the work of newsgathering, reporting and journalism, generative AI’s outputs will become stuck in the past, never progressing past whichever year content creation collapsed.

Offense is the best defense against fast-moving AI companies. Publishers have the power to protect their place in the information ecosystem.

The beauty of the open web is that no one owns it, but Big Tech has always tried to. If publishers sit on the sidelines, looking away from AI’s onslaught to take action, Big Tech may finally succeed.

This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.