Op-Ed: Google's AI Move Poses Multifaceted Risk

Google's next act in search, argues one columnist, could be devastating for the open web. In an op-ed for SFGate, Drew Magary warns that the company's plan to put its Gemini AI answers front and center—and push old-school lists of links behind a "Web" filter and submenus—risks cutting off the traffic that keeps news outlets, small businesses, and countless others alive. For writers haunted by the needs of SEO, it's quite a change. Magary raises and answers the question, "What if there comes a day when the search engine optimizes for itself, and only itself?" He says, "That day has arrived."

Google has already slashed referrals to publishers by roughly a quarter just by deemphasizing external links, he writes. Magary contrasts today's AI-heavy Google with its stripped-down 1998 version and likens the new experience to a "roach motel" that traps users inside Google's own content while hiding original sources and expert work. He frames the shift as part of a broader tech push to make people depend on machine-generated summaries over human-created information, calling it a threat not just to journalism but to the basic way people find and share ideas online. He sees some hope in alternative search engines and growing AI fatigue. But Magary argues Google has just become too powerful and should be broken up. The full piece can be found here.