Perhaps they were just being honest after all. In a court statement, the search engine operator acknowledged for the first time that the "open internet is in decline." Until recently, Google had claimed the exact opposite.
No Thriving Web
Google's official position on the state of the "World Wide Web" is that it is "thriving," that artificial intelligence has minimal impact on web traffic, and that its search engine is enabling more users to discover more websites. However, at least one Google executive has now acknowledged in at least one court filing that the reality is very different.
Search Engine Roundtable has reviewed Google's statement in another ongoing legal battle over its monopoly in online advertising technology. The US Department of Justice is seeking action against Google to break up the internet giant's advertising business, but according to the statement in the court filing, a breakup would have no positive impact.
The Decline of the Web
The company said that "the open web is already in decline." Breaking up Google's advertising business "will only accelerate the decline of the free internet" and "harm publishers who currently rely on the open web for advertising revenue."
This statement by Google is clearly contradictory. Just recently, the head of Google's search engine claimed that Google search click volume remained "relatively stable" compared to the same period last year. She also stated that Google continues to send "billions of clicks" to websites. Google executives have long disputed research in interviews and podcasts suggesting that traffic to open web sites has recently plummeted due to the introduction of artificial intelligence and its services. Google's Vice President of Knowledge, Nick Fox, recently explained on the "AI Inside" podcast, "From our perspective, the web is thriving." This follows a study released by the market research firm Pew Research Center showing that Google users are less likely to visit websites displayed in search results if they first see an AI-generated snippet. Aside from AI, the decline in "traditional internet" usage is attributed to a variety of other factors, including applications, the creation and exploitation of monopolies, and, of course, what Cory Doctorow aptly describes as "the webification."
