Google's Web Crawler Fuels AI Monopoly, Threatening Human Contribution

Google's dominance in search has long been a subject of scrutiny, but its latest strategy is taking it to new heights - or rather, to new depths. The company has blurred the line between its web crawler and AI model, using its massive index to feed both its search results and AI answers. This technique gives Google an unfair advantage over other AI firms while accelerating the rise of automated traffic on the internet at the expense of humans.

According to Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, a company that handles web traffic for about 20% of the world's websites, Google's web crawler sees 3.2 times more of the web than OpenAI's version and 4.8 times more than Microsoft Corp.'s. This advantage is having broader consequences, with AI agents generating more than 57% of web traffic in 2026 compared to about 42% for humans.

The divergence between human and machine activity on the internet is expected to continue, with Prince predicting that machines will increasingly create and consume online content. Google's strategy threatens to make the internet less original and less useful if human contribution is no longer rewarded.