Google’s AI is killing the web. Now the web is fighting back

Google’s search monopoly is becoming an AI monopoly

Google uses Googlebot to train Gemini alongside search indexing, creating a 3.2× crawler advantage over OpenAI and forcing publishers to sacrifice search visibility to block AI training. When original-content creators aren't compensated, web quality collapses; UK CMA and Cloudflare pressure Google into opt-out testing worldwide, but true durability requires separating the crawler entirely.