With the leaders of its own industry sounding alarm bells for the future of digital publishing Google once again finds themselves under the microscope. Neil Vogel, the CEO of People Inc., referred to Google as a “monopolistic force” in the market. His comments illustrate the increasing alarm within the publishing community regarding the search engine behemoth’s power.
In fact, Google employs this exact bot to crawl websites for its search engine. This bot additionally fuels its artificial intelligence capabilities. This dual-use approach has led to a growing concern around the impact automated content like an AI-generated article is having on legacy media establishments. In a recent report, Google’s CFO, Anat Ashkenazi, indicated that the company intends to continue implementing cost reductions “a little further,” prompting speculation about the future of its investment in publisher relationships.
Overcoming these odds, Google was able to deliver impressive financial results for Q2 2025 with $96.4 billion in revenue. This success is in stark contrast to the bad news about referral traffic from platforms to publishers. From May to June of 2025, median referral traffic from Google Search to publishers dropped by 10%. Especially non-news brands—who saw a referral traffic decrease of 14%, a shocking rate of decline.
If we rewind to March 2025, six out of ten U.S. adults are informed by a Google search that produces an AI-generated summary. These AI summaries are revolutionizing how we obtain knowledge. Industry watchers refer to it as a “zero-click” environment, where users receive the answers directly from Google without ever going to the information provider’s website. Jason Kint, Digital Content Next’s CEO, hasn’t shied away from blasting it. He just published a scathing op-ed that connects Google’s new AI overviews with a huge 25% decrease in publisher referral traffic.
The short-term implications of these events are tremendous for the publishing industry. Meanwhile publishers continue to deal with loss of referral traffic and the concerns about Google’s market power and now its AI content policies continue to escalate. The 2025 San Francisco event will take place from October 27–29. It turned into a lively forum for debating the big questions, especially that ever-elusive trade-off between cultivating innovation while protecting the endangered species known as legacy media.
