“Almost every reasonable AI company that’s out there is saying, listen, if it’s a fair playing field, then we’re happy to pay for content,” Prince said. “The problem is that all of them are terrified of Google because if Google gets content for free but they all have to pay for it, they are always going to be at an inherent disadvantage.”
This is happening because Google is using its dominant position in search to ensure that web publishers allow their content to be used in ways that they might not otherwise want it to.
The changing norms of the web
Since 2023, Google has offered a way for website administrators to opt their content out of use for training Google’s large language models, such as Gemini.