Cloudflare head demands separation of Google crawlers for search and AI
Tell me, who even gives Google the right to steal content for its AI? Matthew Prince, head of Cloudflare, flew to London to pressure the British regulator and force Google to play by fair rules. And you know what? He has every reason.
The story is simple. Google uses its web crawler Googlebot to scan content simultaneously for search and for its AI products. AI Overviews, AI Mode and everything else. And then the funniest part begins: if you want to opt out of one, you have to opt out of both. That is, either Google takes your content for everything, or you fall out of search completely. A choice worthy of the mafia.
Prince explains Cloudflare’s position simply: they’re not an AI company, not a media publisher. But 80% of companies in this field are their clients. That is, they sit in the middle and see the whole picture. And here’s what they see: Google claims they supposedly have an absolute right to all content in the world because they’ve worked for the good of the internet for 27 years. Convenient logic, right?
The British regulator already recognized Google as a monopolist in search and advertising. Now Cloudflare demands separation of crawlers – separate for search, separate for AI. It’s the classic story: a company uses its dominance in one area to capture another. And then wonders why everyone’s unhappy.
