Google's AI blackmail: How the giant twists the arms of news sites

Imagine: if you depend on a company for 90% of your needs, and tomorrow they start doing something you don't want, you find yourself in a somewhat complicated situation. Especially when the company clearly tells you: if you want me to stop this action that you disapprove of, you can, but you will no longer have access to my help, which provides 90% of your needs.

This situation is more or less the one in which the online press finds itself, or is about to find itself. At its annual developer conference, Google IO, the Mountain View firm announced a new feature that could change everything for press sites: AI search. This goes a step further than AI overviews, already launched last year, since it offers more or less the experience of a classic chatbot, but which would search the internet for you.

While Google indicates the sources that were used to develop the response, it is clear that most users will not consult them. This therefore poses a major existential question for all the press sites that depend on Google to exist.

Google has chosen not to give them a choice

We learn in Bloomberg, which searched through an internal document, that Google once considered giving press sites the choice of whether or not to be part of the available corpus for AI search. The Californian giant then reportedly concluded that any site wanting to appear on Google Search, Google's traditional search engine, which holds roughly 90% of the market, must agree to be part of the AI search program. Google even calls this a "red line."

Google, however, skillfully defends itself, through a spokesperson stating: "This document is a preliminary list of options in an evolving space and does not reflect actual feasibility or decisions."

This whole matter should, whatever happens, evolve in August 2025, the date on which the first conclusions of the Google antitrust trial could be released. One of the solutions proposed by the Justice Department is precisely to offer press creators and publishers the option to refuse training Google's AI models, without penalty.