Google Accused of AI Content Theft: People Inc. CEO Labels Tech Giant a “Bad Actor”
📉 Google Search Traffic Decline Sparks Outcry
At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, Neil Vogel, CEO of People Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith), accused Google of using publisher content to power its AI tools without proper compensation. He revealed that Google Search once drove up to 90% of People Inc.’s traffic — now reduced to the high 20% range.
Vogel claims Google’s single web crawler indexes sites for both search and AI features, effectively scraping content that once generated traffic to now compete with publishers.
“You cannot take our content to compete with us,” Vogel emphasized.
🤖 AI Crawlers vs. Publisher Rights
Vogel praised OpenAI for negotiating content deals, calling it a “good actor,” while criticizing Google for failing to offer similar agreements. To protect its content, People Inc. has deployed Cloudflare’s AI-blocking technology, which has attracted interest from other AI firms willing to negotiate.
However, blocking Google’s crawler isn’t viable — doing so would remove People Inc. from Google Search entirely, cutting off remaining traffic.
📢 Industry Reactions and Regulatory Calls
- Janice Min, CEO of Ankler Media, called big tech firms “content kleptomaniacs.”
- Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, suggested new regulations may be needed to protect publishers in the AI era.
🌐 Why This Matters for AI and Media
This controversy highlights growing tensions between AI innovation and content ownership rights. As AI tools become more advanced, publishers are demanding fair compensation for the material that powers them — raising questions about ethics, copyright, and the future of digital publishing.
Google AI content scraping, Neil Vogel People CEO, Google bad actor, AI and copyright, Cloudflare AI blocking, publisher rights, AI content theft, media industry vs Google, AI regulation, tech ethics
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