AI Summaries, Centralized Power
Viewed as power, centralized information poses a special risk
Recent reporting in Puck outlined how Google’s AI summaries are causing massive drops in search-referral traffic to publishers in a phenomenon being referred to as “Google Zero” — people find your content on Google, are satisfied with reading Google’s AI summary, and you get zero clicks back. The AI summary does the job. The results are already being felt:
Since Google introduced AI Overviews in May 2024, the percentage of zero-click news-related queries has increased from 56 percent to nearly 70 percent, according to a new Similarweb report. To take one example, Business Insider, which recently announced it was laying off 21 percent of its staff, has seen its organic search traffic collapse by 55 percent . . .
What the reporter misses due to what I believe is deep-seated techno-utopiansism is that rather than being “disruptive” or “transformative,” this is competition from a massively advantageous position (98% of search traffic already) to further centralize power by specifically hurting players in a formerly healthy, decentralized information environment.
How we frame discussions about AI is to me very important. If it’s about the quality of the technology, that’s one discussion. If it’s about power, that’s another. If it’s about reality vs. hype, that’s a third. And so on.
I think this one is about power.