{"slug": "google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price", "title": "Google is a Parasite. And Everyone Else is Paying the Price.", "summary": "Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are consuming original reporting from publishers and presenting synthesized answers that eliminate the need for users to visit the original sources, according to a New York Times examination of Google's AI strategy. The publisher argues this parasitic relationship is destroying the open web by capturing audience and advertising value while publishers bear the cost of producing content. Declining referral traffic threatens the funding of original journalism that Google's AI products depend on.", "body_md": "TL;DR — Key Takeaways\n\n**Google no longer wants to direct users to the open web—it wants to replace the destination with its own AI-generated answer.****Publishers pay to create original reporting, while Google uses that work to retain the audience, advertising value and clicks.****Declining referral traffic means less capacity for free editorial coverage, forcing publishers to seek stronger commercial partnerships and direct audience support.****Google risks destroying the publishing ecosystem its AI products depend on if it continues weakening the creators funding original content.**\n\nThe technology industry spent the past several years arguing about whether artificial intelligence companies stole the content they used to train their models.\n\nAuthors sued. Artists protested. Newspapers demanded compensation. Congressional hearings were held. Licensing agreements were negotiated. AI companies responded with expansive interpretations of fair use and assorted versions of “Everybody does it.”\n\nWe can debate the legal definition of stealing until the lawyers run out of billable hours. But the underlying complaint was easy enough to understand: Someone created something of value, an AI company took it, used it to make its own product more valuable and returned little or nothing to the creator.\n\nSo tell me: How is what Google is doing to the open web any different?\n\nGoogle’s AI Overviews and AI Mode consume reporting, research, interviews, reviews, analysis and expertise produced and paid for by other people. Google then synthesizes that work into an answer, presents it to the user and, whenever possible, eliminates the reason to visit the original source.\n\nThe publisher pays the writer. The publisher pays the editor, the video producer, the hosting bill, the travel expenses and the people who keep the whole operation running. Google takes the finished product, feeds it into its machine, keeps the audience and captures the commercial value.\n\nIf doing that to train an AI model was stealing, putting the result at the top of a search page does not suddenly make it a public service.\n\nThere is another word that describes this economic relationship, though. That word is parasite.\n\n### From Symbiosis to Extraction\n\nGoogle and the open web once had something approaching a symbiotic relationship.\n\nPublishers and creators produced information. Google indexed it, organized it and helped people find it. Google sold advertising alongside its search results. Publishers received traffic that they could monetize through advertising, subscriptions, sponsorships and other commercial opportunities.\n\nIt was never an equal relationship. Google always sat closer to the money and controlled the switchboard. Still, enough value moved in both directions to sustain an enormous ecosystem of journalism, independent publishing, trade media, blogs, communities and specialist websites.\n\nOld Google was the road to the destination.\n\nNew Google wants to be the destination.\n\nA recent [New York Times examination of Google’s AI strategy](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open-web.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zVA.zlFm.N0yQj1yEmr0B&smid=url-share&utm_source=tldrnewsletter) lays out the growing fear among publishers that we are heading toward “Google Zero”—a world in which Google sends little or no meaningful traffic back to the websites producing the information it uses.\n\nThis is not some paranoid fantasy invented by cranky publishers who miss 2012. Human traffic has already fallen dramatically in heavily crawled sectors. Studies have found that people are much less likely to click an organic search result when an AI Overview appears.\n\nThat makes perfect sense. Google built the AI answer to make the click unnecessary.\n\nGoogle says it still sends billions of clicks to websites. I am sure it does. Google also says its AI products can help users discover new sources. I am sure that happens sometimes, too.\n\nBut that is not an answer to the economic question.\n\nThe question is whether Google returns enough value to sustain the people and organizations producing the material upon which its AI depends. Pointing to the clicks that remain does not answer what happens when the flow becomes a trickle.\n\nIt is like a guy standing outside a Brooklyn deli, grabbing sandwiches as they come out of the kitchen, removing the deli’s wrapper and handing pieces to the crowd. He sells advertising around the sidewalk traffic while the people eating the samples never enter the store.\n\nWhen the deli owner complains, the guy points to the three people he sent through the door that afternoon.\n\n“What’s the problem? I’m good for your business.”\n\nNo, you’re eating my lunch. Literally.\n\n### I Have a Horse in This Race\n\nLet me dispense with any pretense of detached objectivity. I have a horse in this race.\n\nTechstrong operates a network of specialized technology publications. We publish more than 500 articles and produce more than 100 videos every month. We employ writers, editors, video producers and other professionals. We send people to industry events. We interview executives and practitioners. We analyze products, companies and technology trends.\n\nAll of that costs real money.\n\nGoogle is building its new AI experience on content produced by Techstrong and thousands of other publishers and creators. It is simultaneously reducing the traffic and economic return that enabled us to produce that content.\n\nI am supposed to be polite about this because Google is big, powerful and responsible for a meaningful amount of the traffic we still receive. That is how these relationships usually work. Everyone whispers about what Google is doing while continuing to feed the machine and hoping somebody else complains first.\n\nWell, here I am.\n\nIf my recent LinkedIn article, [“The Agency-Media Relationship Needs a Recast,”](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agency-media-relationship-needs-recast-alan-shimel-6bjke?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via) looked like my Jerry Maguire moment, it wasn’t.\n\nThis is.\n\nGoogle has changed the economic foundation of digital publishing. Publishers now have to change how they work with agencies, vendors and their own audiences. Those changes will make some people uncomfortable. They make me uncomfortable.\n\nBut pretending the old system still works will not bring it back.\n\n### Why Earned Media is Getting Harder to Earn\n\nThe pressure developing among publishers, public relations agencies and technology vendors is not a separate problem. It is a ripple effect of what Google is doing.\n\nFor years, a publisher could devote editorial resources to a large number of product announcements, executive interviews and industry briefings because Google and other distribution channels delivered an audience. The resulting traffic created advertising inventory, brand reach and commercial opportunities.\n\nGoogle is taking away an increasing share of that audience. As referral traffic declines, so does the amount of earned media a publisher can afford to produce.\n\nThat does not mean editorial coverage should be sold. Let me make that unequivocal.\n\nIndependent reporting must remain independent. News judgment, critical analysis and editorial opinion cannot be determined by whether a company purchased a sponsorship. Paid content must be labeled. Commercial relationships must be transparent. The editorial firewall matters more now, not less.\n\nBut editorial independence does not create an obligation to provide unlimited professional production for free.\n\nHere is the ritual that plays out every day.\n\nAn agency contacts one of our publications and asks us to interview a CEO, attend a briefing, cover an announcement or record a video at an industry conference. We evaluate whether there is legitimate editorial value. We may also explain that we offer sponsorships, advertising, webinars, custom programs and professionally produced video packages.\n\nThe agency responds that it handles earned media only. It cannot discuss a budget.\n\nWe do not want to bypass the agency and make it appear that its editorial pitch was merely converted into a sales lead. The agency cannot bring a commercial opportunity back to the client. The vendor receives little or no coverage. Everyone leaves frustrated.\n\nThat process was designed for a media economy that no longer exists.\n\nIt is not primarily the agency’s fault. Agencies are working within the mandates and budgets their clients give them. It is not necessarily the vendor’s fault, either. Many marketing departments still separate PR, advertising, content, demand generation and events into different budgets managed by different teams that sometimes behave as though they work for different companies.\n\nAnd it is not evidence that publishers have suddenly become greedy.\n\nGoogle changed the underlying economics. Publishers no longer have enough traffic-supported editorial capacity to say yes to every legitimate request, much less every mediocre product announcement dressed up as the invention of fire.\n\nVendors need to broaden the mandate they give their agencies. Agencies should be able to identify legitimate commercial media opportunities, present them to clients and participate in those relationships without pretending everything belongs inside an earned-only box.\n\nPublishers have responsibilities, too. We need simpler offerings, transparent pricing, clear labeling and fewer mystery-meat proposals. We must distinguish between independent editorial consideration and professional media products such as guaranteed executive interviews, event-floor video, webinars, sponsored programs and sustained audience access.\n\nNobody should be buying favorable coverage. But neither should anyone expect a media company to manufacture a professional product, distribute it to a valuable audience and absorb the entire cost.\n\n### Now We Need More From the Audience\n\nThere is another relationship under pressure that publishers are even more reluctant to discuss: our relationship with readers, listeners and viewers.\n\nUnder the old model, that relationship could be casual.\n\nYou might arrive through Google, read one article and never come back. You might visit once a month, once a week or several times a day. If you did not want to register or tell us anything about yourself, that was OK. Google supplied enough anonymous traffic, and publishers monetized the aggregate audience.\n\nThat model is disappearing.\n\nIf Google no longer sends us enough people, we must build direct relationships with the people who value our work. That means newsletters, registration, memberships, premium content, video, virtual and in-person events, communities and experiences that do not depend on Google deciding whether we deserve a click today.\n\nIt also means publishers will put more content behind registration walls and ask readers, listeners and viewers to provide more information about themselves.\n\nI know many of you do not like that. Frankly, I do not blame you.\n\nTechnology and cybersecurity audiences understand better than most what happens to personal information. Too many companies already have your email address, title, employer, browsing history and purchasing interests. You have endured spam, retargeting, breaches and those “helpful” sales calls that mysteriously arrive five minutes after you download a white paper.\n\nYour reluctance to complete one more registration form is entirely rational.\n\nBut here is the uncomfortable truth: Google has broken the economic exchange that allowed people to consume professionally produced content anonymously while someone else paid the bill.\n\nIf you value independent technology media, we will increasingly need something directly from you. It might be registration, newsletter participation, event attendance, membership or, in some cases, money.\n\nThat obligation works both ways.\n\nPublishers must earn the information we request. We should ask only for what we need, explain how it will be used, protect it and resist the temptation to turn every registered reader into a sales target. We must deliver enough continuing value to justify a direct relationship.\n\nThe answer is not to replace Google’s fence with our own hostile maze of pop-ups, forms and paywalls. A website that demands your résumé, firstborn and blood type before showing the second paragraph is not building trust.\n\nThe goal is a fair exchange: Identity and engagement from the audience in return for credible reporting, informed analysis, specialized expertise and a community worth joining.\n\n### Nobody Gets to Keep the Old Deal\n\nThis is the part of the Jerry Maguire speech where nobody leaves the room entirely happy.\n\nPublishers must stop depending on rented audiences. We need to build direct relationships, develop better products, simplify our commercial offerings and earn the trust required to ask audiences for information.\n\nAgencies must move beyond the fiction that every valuable media opportunity can be delivered through earned-media outreach alone.\n\nVendors must recognize that credible, specialized media cannot provide unlimited professional production and access to valuable audiences without commercial support.\n\nReaders must decide whether the independent publishers they value are worth supporting with their attention, registration, participation and perhaps a subscription.\n\nAnd Google must restore meaningful value to creators, compensate them for the content it consumes or accept that regulators may eventually impose a fairer exchange.\n\nNobody gets to preserve every advantage of the old model.\n\nPublishers cannot demand guaranteed Google traffic. Agencies cannot promise clients unlimited earned coverage. Vendors cannot expect professional media products without budgets. Readers cannot demand an endless supply of costly, specialized content while remaining permanently anonymous and unreachable.\n\nAnd Google cannot use the open web as free raw material while starving the people who create it.\n\nGoogle’s problem is the same one every parasite eventually confronts. It cannot summarize reporting that was never funded. It cannot quote experts who were never interviewed. It cannot synthesize original ideas nobody could afford to develop. If it weakens the host too much, it eventually destroys its own source of nourishment.\n\nThe old internet offered everyone a comfortable arrangement. Google supplied the audience. Publishers supplied the content. Vendors supplied the announcements. Agencies supplied the pitches. Readers supplied little more than the occasional click.\n\nGoogle has broken that arrangement by taking the content and keeping the click.\n\nNow the rest of us must build a new deal based on transparent value exchanged among publishers, vendors, agencies and audiences.\n\nGoogle may believe the open web exists to feed its AI. Vendors may believe media exists to amplify their announcements for free. Readers may believe professionally produced information can remain unlimited, anonymous and costless.\n\nNone of those beliefs will pay for the next article, interview, investigation or original idea.\n\nGoogle built the fence. Unless the rest of us change the terms, we are the ones who will end up trapped behind it.\n\n*That’s what Shimmy says.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price", "canonical_source": "https://techstrong.ai/features/google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price/", "published_at": "2026-07-22 08:17:55+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-22 08:39:46.931361+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "ai-products", "large-language-models"], "entities": ["Google", "New York Times"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-is-a-parasite-and-everyone-else-is-paying-the-price.jsonld"}}