News News In Crisis Mode as AI search traffic directed by Google Push Website traffic

The main communication points are in crisis mode, as artificial intelligence chats are pushed by Google and other giants of large web -traffic technologies.

Google has published a “AI Overview” feature in its search engine asking for traditional “blue links” to other places in favor of abstracts automatically generated. Last month, the search giant deployed the “Ai Mode”, which is expected to worsen the problem still by responding to search queries with Chatbot style conversations and few direct links.

Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of News Outlet The Atlantic, told employees earlier this year that they should assume that Google traffic will fall to zero over time, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

“Google is changing since being a search engine for a response engine,” Thompson told The Journal. “We need to develop new strategies.”

Decreased traffic hurts income from news rooms with cash and feeds layoffs. When Business Insider decreased 21% of its staff at a scope of the newsroom last month, its main chief Barbara Peng said that the measure was intended to help “support the extreme traffic of falls outside our control”.

The traffic website at Business Insider was incorporated by an increase of 55% from April 2022 to April 2025, according to data from similar analytics sites cited by the magazine.

Huffpost has also lost more than half of its traffic during the same period, the data show, while the Washington Post, another of the reduction in reduction of work, has lost almost half of its search audience.

The launch of AI -generated summaries instead of the links “is a serious threat to journalism that should not be underestimated,” said William Lewis, CEO of Washington Post.

Google did not immediately return a comment request.

Despite traffic losses, Google has stated that it continues to incorporate traffic into news places by search.

Critics, such as The News Media Alliance, a commercial group representing hundreds of communication points, including publication, have warned that the general views of the AI ​​and other functions and implemented on Google will have devastating consequences for the industry.

They claim that Google and other Giants in the AI ​​have used news content to train their Chatbots without proper credit or compensation, and then used the same products to erode traffic.

Danielle Coffey, CEO and President of News Media Alliance, exploded the Ai Mode of Googles last month as “theft”.

“The links were the last search quality that it gave to traffic and revenue publishers,” said Coffey. “Now Google only holds content and uses it without a return, the definition of theft. DOJ remedies must address it to prevent continuous internet domination by a company.”

AI PUSH occurs when Google faces intense pressure from federals over its business model, including losses in a couple of antimonopoly cases presented by the DOJ that could force a company break.

The Judge of the North District -American Amit Mehta will decide in August on how to break down Google’s illegal domain over online search after tagging the company as a “monopolist” in an initial sentence last year. DOJ lawyers want Mehta to consider the future impact of AI when they make remedies.

Any other place, Google recently lost a separate DOJ case in which it was determined to have two illegal monopolies on digital advertising technology.

In this case, the Judge of the North District -American Leonie Brinkema affected the impact on communication points, and found that the “exclusive conduct of Google’s exclusion substantially damaged the clients of the Google publisher, the competitive process and, in short, information consumers on the open web”.

The Tech Digital Test Remedy Phase will begin in September.