Written by Brook Schaaf

Google has seized the bull by its horns, boldly facing down the innovator’s dilemma by offering AI Mode to all U.S. users. According to PracticalEcommerce, “AI Mode resembles AI Overviews, providing answers to queries and links to the sources. The difference is that searchers in AI Mode can chat follow-up questions in the same tab, much like ChatGPT or Claude.” 
 
This reference to quickly-growing competitors gets back to the innovator’s dilemma: in this case, choosing between milking the cash cow of paid search and engaging the disruptive new pattern of answer engines (which may have an uncertain product market fit and less financial yield). With AI Mode going beyond AI Overviews to extract content from publishers with little to nothing offered in exchange, it’s no surprise to see headlines like “Publisher Alliance to Google’s AI Mode Is Theft!” on SearchEngineWorld. 
 
Travel Lemming site owner Nate Hake published a lengthy, critical blog post. His position is largely in line with that of New York Magazine, which published “Google is Burying the Web Alive.”
 
The consequences of this? First, it’s going to mean more hardship on publishers – not just affiliates but any online publisher, regardless of how or even if they monetize. Second, affiliate – versatile and varied – is nothing if not resilient, so the channel faces no existential threat even if certain publishers do (SEO Lily Ray actually expresses explicit optimism for affiliate’s opportunities in LLMs in an interview with Hello Partner). Third, the narrative of theft is now well established and will spread not just through the SEO and media insider communities but through aggrieved mainstream publications.
 
Where will this lead? No one knows, but it seems safe to say nowhere good. The open-web experience depends on fresh content, and fresh content depends on some kind of revenue generation, which is in more and more peril. This isn’t a theoretical possibility. Traffic and revenue drops have harmed and sometimes devastated an unknown number of small publishers, with many shutting down. Big publishers, too – Vertical Scope announced a drop in revenue.
 
Big Tech observers have noted that Google is trying to have its cake and eat it too, in reference to the innovator’s dilemma (enjoying the fruits of both the old and new ways). Except the “cake content” is not Google’s – it’s yours. 
 
Next week we’ll look at possibilities to improve the situation. If only there were some kind of law that protected intellectual property…

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