Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’

For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its hunt motor is sending radical to a wider assortment of websites than ever. But in a court filing from past week, Google admitted that “the unfastened web is already successful accelerated decline,” arsenic spotted earlier by Jason Kint and reported connected by Search Engine Roundtable.

Google submitted the filing up of different proceedings that volition find however it volition code its monopoly successful the advertizing exertion business. The US Department of Justice recommends that Google interruption up its advertizing business, but the institution argues successful the filing that this isn’t perfect due to the fact that it would “only accelerate” the diminution of the unfastened web, “harming publishers who presently trust connected open-web show advertizing revenue.”

The connection sharply contrasts Google’s caller communicative astir the wellness of hunt connected the web. Google has a wide inducement to marque itself look weaker oregon little monopolistic successful the courtroom, but its admittance reflects a world galore publishers are going through. Several digital publishers and independent website owners person reported experiencing a diminution successful postulation pursuing changes to Google Search’s algorithm and the emergence of AI chatbots.

In an emailed connection to The Verge, Google spokesperson Jackie Berté said the connection is “one cherry-picked enactment that misrepresents” the company’s ineligible filing. “It’s wide from the preceding condemnation that we’re referring to ‘open-web show advertising’ and not the unfastened web arsenic a whole,” Berté said. “We are pointing retired the obvious: that investments successful non-open web show advertizing similar connected TV and retail media are increasing astatine the disbursal of those successful unfastened web show advertising.”

When asked astir changes to web postulation during an occurrence of Decoder successful May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the institution is “definitely sending postulation to a wider scope of sources and publishers” pursuing the rollout of AI hunt tools.

Nick Fox, Google’s elder vice president of knowledge, similarly defended Google against claims that changes to hunt are impacting web traffic. “From our constituent of view, the web is thriving,” Fox said connected an occurrence of the AI Inside podcast. In the aftermath of a report from Pew Research, which said radical are “less likely” to click connected links erstwhile presented with Google’s AI Overview, Google Search caput Liz Reid claimed that click measurement has remained “relatively stable” erstwhile compared to the aforesaid clip past year, adding that Google continues to “send billions of clicks to websites each day.”

Update, September 8th: Added a connection from Google.