The End of Clicking: Welcome to the Machine Web
Google is gutting the web and selling the bones to AI. And unless we fight back, your favourite websites may quietly vanish behind a chatbot’s smile.
Google’s new “AI Mode” doesn’t just summarise the internet, it might rewrite the rules entirely. Announced by Sundar Pichai as a “total reimagining of Search,” this mode replaces blue links with AI-written answers.
For users, it’s fast and frictionless. For publishers? Existential. As Google consumes content to train its models, fewer users click through. Websites report more impressions but fewer clicks, what used to be traffic now dies at the doorstep of the chatbot.
We are building a “machine web,” one built for AI to read, not people, I discussed this years ago when I recommended people to start marketing for AI instead people. Already, 60% of searches end in zero clicks. AI Mode may halve what little traffic remains.
Small creators are squeezed, replaced by licensing deals for giants like Reddit or The New York Times. Google says it’s innovating for users. Publishers say it’s theft.
Here’s what I’m watching closely: • AI Mode replaces results with summaries, killing discovery. • “Chat chambers” amplify hallucinated misinformation. • Cloudflare proposes paywalls for bots, not people.
If AI becomes the interface, and content creators vanish, who decides what we see and know? It’s not just a tech issue, it’s a question of who controls knowledge itself, and why I am building Futurwise. We’re entering a post-search world. But if the link dies, what replaces trust?
Read the full article on BBC.
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