Cloudflare CEO Takes Aim at Alphabet with AI Training Block

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has accused Alphabet of being responsible for 'everything wrong' online. He claims that search engines like Google are driving the attention economy, which in turn leads to platforms like Facebook and TikTok.

Prince's company Cloudflare has introduced a new setting called 'Disallow AI Training', which defaults all free customers to block Google from using their pages for AI training. The feature is currently available only for new ad-supported sites, but existing customers will be migrated based on their previous settings.

The CEO believes that if this setting gains traction, it could have a significant impact on Alphabet's infrastructure bill, which has already increased by 3.7 times from $24.64 billion in 2021 to $91.45 billion in 2025. He notes that this would be equivalent to a 71% reduction in operating income for the company.

However, analysts argue that the impact on Alphabet's stock price will be minimal, as the company can license data from other sources at a low cost. The real risk is not financial but rather access: if a large share of Cloudflare's sites switch training off, Google loses permission to use more fresh web content for future Gemini training and certain grounding uses.