Imagine a web without Google

“What if we did without Google?” It’s a question that, until a few years ago, would have seemed absurd – even self-defeating – for any online publisher. In recent weeks, however, several news sites – including Politico, The Economist and USA Today – have begun to seriously consider this, alongside the social network Reddit. They are all united by a common problem: for years, even decades, they have relied on Google for visibility and, consequently, financial returns, in a model that no longer works today.

Google, in fact, has ceased to be the Google we knew back in 1998, when the start-up made its mark on a web still dominated by ‘portals’ such as Excite and Yahoo, with a minimalist homepage and a core service: to be the world’s best search engine. You’d search for something on Google and Google would find you the best results, whilst also selling the very adverts that allowed the site or blog to be monetised. A founding principle of the web – one that now risks becoming a dead letter. The reason is, of course, the rise of artificial intelligence, which, since late 2022 – that is, since the launch of ChatGPT – has forced all companies in the sector to adapt: Google has therefore begun responding to users by providing them with the answer they were looking for, generated using AI. In doing so, however, it has effectively bypassed the websites, blogs and forums from which it draws the information it needs to deliver to users, who at that point no longer have such a great need to click through and visit page after page.

A convenience, some might say, but also a disaster for the web economy, which had relied on precisely those clicks for decades (as demonstrated by aberrations of the system such as ‘click-baiting’). In 2024, Reddit struck a deal with Google worth $60 million a year, under which Google can use Reddit’s content to train its AI systems. A substantial sum, which at the time was presented as proof that user-generated content still held enormous commercial value for AI companies, so hungry for data with which to develop and improve their models. Yet today, Reddit’s executives are reportedly considering stopping feeding the site’s content to Google, given that Google no longer deigns to send traffic to Reddit. Other sites, as mentioned, are considering doing the same, focusing on retaining their own audience and erecting ever-higher paywalls, so as to continue monetising even without Google.

The deal between Google and the rest of the web was a basic, fundamental one: we track and read everything; in return, we give you visibility, clicks and money – and the more you play along, the more money you’ll make. Now that the deal seems to have been broken, some publishers are considering blocking Google’s crawlers – the bots that scour the web on the company’s behalf to gather information. Once upon a time, it was Google that ensured a site appeared in its search results; today, its bots are also parasitic, sucking up content and regurgitating it to the user, leaving the sites empty-handed. The situation is absurd and dramatic. After all, for it to prompt publishers such as Axel Springer to consider blocking Google’s crawlers, it must be. Yet it was also predictable. Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, calls it ‘Google Zero’. For several years now, he has been asking colleagues, newspaper editors and publishers the same question: what are your plans in the event of Google Zero? In other words: what will become of your business if Google were to stop sending you traffic?

Until a few years ago, imagining such a scenario required a great deal of imagination. After all, many people would ask, why on earth would Google do that? Of course, there were early signs, such as Snippets – the information boxes that gave users the answer without them having to click on any links. But this was a limited phenomenon, mainly concerning specific searches with a clear-cut, verifiable answer (for example, ‘how old is this actor?’). The race for AI has changed everything, starting with Google’s role: in 2024, it launched AI Overview, the service that uses AI to generate answers to users’ questions. Initially, these appeared in a small box at the top of Google’s results; over time, they expanded and are now the site’s primary answer, making it resemble a chatbot. With subsequent updates, links have gradually lost ground and relevance, to the point where they have become almost an optional appendix at the bottom of the answer. So, what next? No one knows yet, and it brings to mind that phrase often attributed to Mark Fisher, according to which it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Except that in this case, it seems easier to imagine the end of the web than the end of Google.