There was a time when Google’s job was fairly simple. You searched for something, Google pointed you toward the best websites, and everyone got on with their day. Search engine, meet internet – sounds like a great arrangement. However, recently things began changing. It appears that Google increasingly wants to answer questions itself using AI-generated summaries instead of sending people to websites. Convenient for users ? Sometimes, maybe, but this is potentially devastating for publishers, independent businesses, bloggers, journalists, review sites, and specialist experts?
For years, businesses were told: Create useful content to keep your audiences engaged, build authority, invest in SEO, post articles to show your expertise in the field.
So we all did exactly that; we built websites, wrote articles, created guides, answered customer questions, and effectively feed the internet with valuable information.
Now the growing concern is this: some parties may increasingly use that information to generate their own answers while reducing the need for users to actually visit the original source – us! In simple terms, businesses create the meal and Google increasingly serves itself the plate. That is why this matters far beyond journalism, because Google appears to be shifting from Search Engine to Answer Engine – its AI Overviews and AI-powered search tools are changing the structure of the web itself.
Traditionally Google offered:
- User searches
- Websites Links
- User visits website
- Website earns traffic, ad revenue, leads, or customers
Now:
- User searches
- Google generates AI summary
- User often never clicks through
- Original publisher loses traffic
For media companies this threatens advertising revenue and subscriptions; for businesses it threatens visibility, authority, and customer acquisition.
Imagine spending years becoming the expert in your field only for a machine to paraphrase your work above your website while your traffic quietly drains away like a shop watching customers queue outside next door because someone else copied the sign. This is the problem and we should all become more concerned.
Why Businesses Should Care
This is not only a “news industry” problem, because if fewer people visit websites directly:
- small businesses lose enquiries
- niche experts lose audiences
- independent review sites disappear
- specialist blogs become financially unsustainable
- online competition narrows
- large platforms gain even more control over visibility
The danger is not simply reduced clicks; our issue is dependency we have on one search engine. When one company effectively controls how information is discovered, prioritised, summarised, and distributed, businesses become vulnerable to decisions they cannot influence. A small algorithm change can wipe out years of work overnight. Anyone who has ever watched website traffic vanish after a Google update knows this is not theoretical. Somewhere, an SEO consultant is currently staring into the distance holding a lukewarm coffee wondering where it all went wrong.
The Online Safeguarding Problem Nobody Is Talking About
There is another side to this conversation that businesses, regulators, and the public should not ignore: online safety.
Supporters of AI-driven search argue that centralised answers could help reduce scams, misinformation, and dangerous fake websites by keeping users away from low-quality search results. In theory, that sounds sensible.
The internet is full of:
- phishing sites
- fake shops
- cloned banking pages
- fraudulent “customer support” numbers
- AI-generated scam articles
- manipulated reviews
- fake investment schemes
Many people already struggle to tell legitimate websites from convincing frauds, so a properly moderated AI system could potentially help filter some of this out by:
- prioritising verified information
- reducing exposure to scam-heavy websites
- identifying known fraud patterns faster
- removing malicious pages from visibility
But there is another side to this because if users increasingly trust a single AI-generated answer without checking sources themselves, misinformation can also become centralised. Instead of thousands of questionable websites competing for attention, users may end up relying heavily on one summarised interpretation generated by one platform. That creates new safeguarding concerns:
- inaccurate AI summaries presented with confidence
- fake businesses gaming AI systems
- scammers manipulating AI-generated content
- reduced visibility for legitimate independent sources
- users losing the habit of checking multiple sources
- difficulty tracing where information originally came from
In fraud prevention, transparency matters; users need to know:
- where information came from
- who created it
- whether it can be independently verified
If AI-generated search results become too opaque, trust becomes harder to measure. Ironically, the same systems designed to protect users from online manipulation could potentially make manipulation harder to detect if too much authority becomes concentrated in one place. That is likely where regulators, safeguarding organisations, and consumer protection bodies may eventually focus more attention.
Can This Become a Competition Issue in the UK – I think potentially, yes. In the UK, competition concerns relating to dominant digital platforms can fall under the remit of the Competition and Markets Authority, often referred to as the CMA.
The CMA has already investigated major technology companies regarding:
- digital advertising dominance
- search market power
- mobile ecosystems
- platform competition
- consumer choice
Google’s control of search has been under scrutiny for years internationally. If AI search reduces traffic to publishers while strengthening Google’s own position even further, some may argue this raises fair competition concerns, particularly if:
- businesses become unable to compete fairly for visibility
- original creators lose commercial benefit from their work
- users are steered toward platform-controlled summaries instead of independent sources
As for Ofcom, its role is more focused on communications regulation, broadcasting, telecoms, and aspects of online safety rather than competition law itself. However, the broader public interest issue around information access, media plurality, and online influence could still attract attention in policy discussions. The UK is already moving toward tighter regulation of large digital gatekeepers through the Digital Markets framework. So this conversation is absolutely happening at regulatory level already.
Should People Start Using Other Search Engines?
Possibly, yes, but not as a tribal “delete Google immediately” campaign, however tempting this may seem, The more realistic point is diversification: businesses should stop acting as though Google is the internet. Relying entirely on one platform for discovery has always been risky. AI search simply exposes how risky it really was.
Encouraging people to explore alternatives can help reduce dependency and improve competition. Search engines such as DuckDuckGo, (DDG) Brave Search, and Bing all offer different approaches to search and privacy. I love DDG because it keeps all those nasty adverts on utube from popping up.
But the bigger solution is not merely swapping one giant platform for another, but more about rebuilding direct relationships.
What Businesses Can Actually Do
Businesses cannot control Google’s direction, but they can reduce vulnerability. Some suggestions include:
- email lists you own
- communities you control
- direct customer relationships
- brand loyalty
- repeat visitors
- memberships and subscriptions
- social diversification
- partnerships and referrals
- strong offline reputation
If customers search specifically for your business by name rather than generic keywords, you become harder to replace with an AI summary.
There is also growing value in:
- original research
- unique expertise
- first-hand experience
- opinion-led content
- human personality
- trusted specialist voices
AI can summarise information, but it is far less effective at replacing genuine authority, lived experience, or community trust and that human touch we can all sense. Well at least for the time being…
The Fair Play Question
The internet originally worked because links created an ecosystem:
- creators made content
- search engines sent traffic
- audiences found information
If AI platforms increasingly consume content without fairly returning value to creators, that balance starts to break down and when the balance breaks down, fewer people have incentive to create high-quality material in the first place. That affects journalism, education, businesses and public trust. My concern isn’t that technology evolves, because it always changes. My concern is whether the rules remain fair when one or two companies sit between nearly everyone and the information they consume. Because once discovery is controlled centrally, influence follows very quickly behind it, and this is something history suggests that is rarely something societies should ignore.
