Latest news with #NicholasThompson
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google's AI Is Actively Destroying the News Media
Google's pivot to AI-powered search is proving disastrous for the digital news media landscape. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company's latest tools, including its wildly hallucinating AI Overviews and chatbot-style AI Mode, are causing the traffic being sent to publishers to plummet as users no longer feel the need to click through to the actual source of information, cutting already-slammed journalists off from ad revenue and subscriptions. It's an existential threat. News publications, already gutted by the internet, have been hit hard as they try to adapt to a post-organic-search world. Per the WSJ, search traffic to Business Insider's media empire fell by a whopping 55 percent between April 2022 and April 2025. Last month, the company cut roughly 21 percent of its staff, with CEO Barbara Peng noting that it had to "endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control." How to respond to this existential threat remains a major point of contention. "Google is shifting from being a search engine to an answer engine," The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson told the WSJ. "We have to develop new strategies." Some publications, like the New York Times, are taking legal action, with the newspaper suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. It's a thorny debate, with publishers accusing the AI industry of exploiting their content without ever fairly remunerated. Plummeting traffic due to AI-enhanced search on Google is only exacerbating the tension. Google is under threat from AI itself. Apple executive Eddy Cue admitted in federal court earlier this year that Google searches in the company's Safari browser had fallen for the first time in 20 years, indicating the end of traditional search as we know it could be nigh. Confusingly, Google has since disputed the claim and has remained adamant that its number of total searches is still going up — while going all-in on its glitchy AI products. "This is the moment that propels us forward in our ability to achieve our mission and really deliver a transformed search experience for users," Google's head of knowledge and information division Nick Fox told Adweek. The digital media landscape and Google are now caught in an unfortunate race to the bottom. The tech giant's search and AI features rely on a steady stream of news and original content. But by cutting the creators of that material out of a once lucrative organic search-driven revenue source, that stream could soon be reduced to a trickle, if not an incestuous swamp of AI-generated nonsense. Well-established outlets will likely weather the storm better. Research revealed last week that Google's AI Overviews favors major news outlets, while smaller publications struggle for visibility. Meanwhile, the media industry has no other option but to look for new business models in light of an existential threat. Legal challenges to Google's indiscriminate scraping of copyrighted materials are likely to continue to crop up as well. "Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue," said trade association News/Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey in a statement last month, following Google's announcement of its AI Mode feature. "Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft." More on Google's AI: "You Can't Lick a Badger Twice": Google's AI Is Making Up Explanations for Nonexistent Folksy Sayings
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
As Google AI Takes Over Search, News Sites Lose Clicks and Cut Jobs
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is drawing criticism from media executives who say its growing use of artificial intelligence is reducing traffic to news outlets, forcing them to rethink their digital strategies and slash jobs. According to a Wall Street Journal report Tuesday, publishers are reporting major declines in referral traffic as Google's AI Overviews and chatbot features increasingly serve answers directly to users eliminating the need to click on search results. The shift from a search engine to an answer engine is real, said The Atlantic's CEO Nicholas Thompson, who added that media companies now have to explore new approaches to stay relevant. Data from analytics firm Similarweb, cited in the report, shows steep drops in organic search traffic across major publishers: HuffPost's desktop and mobile traffic more than halved in the past three years. The Washington Post saw nearly the same level of decline. Business Insider reported a 55% drop and recently laid off 21% of its workforce. The New York Times saw its share of organic search traffic shrink to 36.5% in April 2025, down from almost 44% in 2022. Although The Wall Street Journal's search traffic rose in raw numbers, its share of total traffic dipped to 24% from 29% over the same period. WaPo CEO William Lewis warned that click-free search answers represent a serious threat to journalism. Beyond news, Google's AI tools have also dented traffic to travel guides, health information, and product review pages. The report notes that Google's upcoming AI Mode could hit even harder. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
As Google AI Takes Over Search, News Sites Lose Clicks and Cut Jobs
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is drawing criticism from media executives who say its growing use of artificial intelligence is reducing traffic to news outlets, forcing them to rethink their digital strategies and slash jobs. According to a Wall Street Journal report Tuesday, publishers are reporting major declines in referral traffic as Google's AI Overviews and chatbot features increasingly serve answers directly to users eliminating the need to click on search results. The shift from a search engine to an answer engine is real, said The Atlantic's CEO Nicholas Thompson, who added that media companies now have to explore new approaches to stay relevant. Data from analytics firm Similarweb, cited in the report, shows steep drops in organic search traffic across major publishers: HuffPost's desktop and mobile traffic more than halved in the past three years. The Washington Post saw nearly the same level of decline. Business Insider reported a 55% drop and recently laid off 21% of its workforce. The New York Times saw its share of organic search traffic shrink to 36.5% in April 2025, down from almost 44% in 2022. Although The Wall Street Journal's search traffic rose in raw numbers, its share of total traffic dipped to 24% from 29% over the same period. WaPo CEO William Lewis warned that click-free search answers represent a serious threat to journalism. Beyond news, Google's AI tools have also dented traffic to travel guides, health information, and product review pages. The report notes that Google's upcoming AI Mode could hit even harder. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Post
10-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
News outlets in crisis mode as Google-led AI search push crushes website traffic
Major news outlets are in crisis mode as artificial intelligence chatbots pushed by Google and other Big Tech giants crush website traffic. Google has rolled out an 'AI Overviews' feature in its search engine that demotes traditional 'blue links' to other sites in favor of auto-generated summaries. Last month, the search giant rolled out 'AI Mode' – which is expected to make the problem even worse by respond to search queries with chatbot-style conversations and few direct links. Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of news outlet The Atlantic, told employees earlier this year that they should assume traffic from Google will drop toward zero over time, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. 'Google is shifting from being a search engine to an answer engine,' Thompson told the Journal. 'We have to develop new strategies.' 3 Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently rolled out AI Mode for search. AFP via Getty Images Dwindling traffic is hurting revenue for cash-strapped newsrooms and fueling layoffs. When Business Insider slashed 21% of its staff in a newsroom-wide culling last month, its top boss Barbara Peng said the move was meant to help 'endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control.' Traffic to Business Insider's website plunged by a whopping 55% from April 2022 to April 2025, according to data from analytics sites Similarweb cited by the Journal. HuffPost has also lost more than half of its traffic over the same period, the data showed, while the Washington Post – another newsroom racked by job cuts – has lost nearly half its search audience. The rollout of AI-generated summaries in place of links 'is a serious threat to journalism that should not be underestimated,' Washington Post CEO William Lewis said. Google did not immediately return a request for comment. 3 AI features are hurting search traffic for news outlets. REUTERS Despite the traffic losses, Google has claimed that it is still funneling traffic to news sites through search. Critics, such as the News Media Alliance – a trade group that represents hundreds of news outlets including The Post – has warned that AI Overviews and other Google-implemented AI features will have devastating consequences for the industry. They allege that Google and other AI giants have used news content to train their chatbots without proper credit or compensation – and then used those same products to erode traffic. Danielle Coffey, the CEO and president of News Media Alliance, blasted Googles' rollout of AI Mode last month as 'theft.' 'Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,' Coffey said. 'Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company.' 3 Google CEO Sundar Pichai is pictured. AFP via Getty Images The AI push comes as Google faces intense pressure from the feds over its business model – including losses in a pair of antitrust cases brought by the DOJ that could force a breakup of the company. US District Judge Amit Mehta is set to decide by August on how to break up Google's illegal dominance over online search after labeling the company as a 'monopolist' in an initial ruling last year. DOJ lawyers want Mehta to consider the future impact of AI when crafting remedies. Elsewhere, Google recently lost a separate DOJ case in which it was determined to have two illegal monopolies over digital advertising technology. In that case, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema touched on the impact to news outlets, finding that Google's 'exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google's publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.' The remedy phase of the digital ad tech trial will begin in September.
