References: [ Press release ] & UK CMA’s Google Publisher Conduct Requirement Document here: [ PDF | Archived ]
“In a world first, publishers will now have effective tools to prevent their content being used to power AI features in search, such as AI Overviews,” read the United Kingdom’s (UK) press release on the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) new obligations put on the search giant Google.
Attribute publishers and link out to sources: “To boost consumer trust, Google is also now required to make sure that publisher content is properly attributed, using clear links, in AI‑generated search results,” read the press release.
Take reasonable steps and be transparent about the attribution approach: “It requires Google to take reasonable steps to ensure that search content is attributed clearly and accurately in general search and that end users have a clear means to access that search content and to publish clear, comprehensible, and user-friendly information explaining its approach to attribution,” reads Google’s Publisher Conduct Requirement document published by CMA. &
Competition authority is monitoring & will seek remedies if required: “CMA is actively monitoring how Google is implementing these [May 2026] changes – including assessing the implications for businesses. If needed, the CMA will bring forward work on further measures to ensure a fair exchange of value between Google and publishers.”
Google needs to implement these changes before nine months: “It will have nine months to implement all changes but the CMA expects important parts of the controls to become available to publishers well before that deadline.”
Google is required to file compliance reports after six months: “Google will also be required to submit and publish compliance reports, supported by key data and metrics, explaining changes it has made and how it has complied. These are due every six months for the first year, after which the CMA will review the frequency of reporting.”
What publishers’ concerns this directive aimed: According to the Publisher Conduct Requirement document published on June 3, 2026, the key concerns of publishers were:
- insufficient choice over the use of their content, provided for general search (Search Content), in Google’s generative AI;
- lack of transparency about the use of their Search Content in Google’s generative AI;
- ineffective attribution of their Search Content when used in Google’s generative AI.
You can refer to the full document of Google’s Publisher Conduct Requirement Document here: [ PDF | Archived ]
Here is what Indian news publishers are thinking about AI-driven news discovery and AI data training:
“Journalistic content is not like free-floating content on the internet. It is intellectual property…data has to be contracted. It cannot be surrendered,” said Mohit Jain, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. They are the publishers of Times of India and various other publications. He made these comments at one of the discussions at the India AI Impact Summit (2026) on February 16, 2026, involving various publications like India Today, Dainik Bhaskar, The Hindu, and Amar Ujala.
You can read the publishers’ nine-pointer list of things that AI companies need to do and a five-point execution plan of those nine-pointers here.
Agentic and bot internet traffic is now more than human-led traffic: “Welp, that happened faster than I predicted. Thought it would be end of 2027, then early 2027, but agentic traffic growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet’s history,” said Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s CEO.
The existential crisis of online publishers: “If AI agents become the main way people interact with information, the browser (or the proprietary app) stops being the primary interface, the AI app does….The web basically becomes raw material for AI. Monetization then moves from the web to AI apps. Eventually, as the utility of AI improves, the open web will become invisible to humans,” reads an excerpt from Nikhil Pahwa’s Reasoned newsletter. Read the full newsletter here.
The publisher risks locking users to AI platforms by design: “Destination sites will die. AI tools will be able to replicate quality in a manner that is faster and cheaper, leading to potential alternatives for publishers and increased competition. AI tools like Perplexity will provide the same content and leave little reason for people to exit destinations. These tools will become better and faster at curation with time,” said the person who created WWW (World Wide Web), Tim Berners-Lee’s interview with Nikhil Pahwa. Read the full article here.
Some questions to ponder upon:
- The choice & design problem: The UK CMA says publishers now have a choice. But is it really a choice when the non-AI alternative is the less or lack of visibility to the larger public whose search behavior is already changing to AI-based search in chatbots, particularly driven by search engine/chatbot design choices?
- The protectionist problem: Is “protecting IP” through opt-outs from AI data training is a good and profitable tradeoff for visibility and reach, which is becoming primarily AI-driven?
- The AI attribution problem: UK CMA’s directive requires Google to attribute the sources/publishers. Fair enough. But how does this attribution happen at the design level? Is a Wikipedia-like hyperlink after a statement enough? Or, does this attribution require naming the publication (and the journalist/writer) too? Where should these links appear? Would it still be alright if they appeared at the end like footnotes– which can nudge the users not to click-out the platform? How can we design this attribution problem that is profitable to the publisher and not the engagement metrics of the AI platform?
- The bot monetization problem: Bot traffic has already overtaken human traffic on the internet. Human traffic is monetised through ads and paywalls. Bot traffic reads/scrapes your IP-protected content and serves it elsewhere– either in the same or modified language. So, who is actually profiting from publishers’ journalism or content today? If publishers can’t monetise bot traffic, are they already running a dying business model?
- The bot optimization problem: How do we design websites that are specifically optimized for bot traffic? SEO largely had a standardised playbook of techniques that could be gamed and exploited for the benefit of publishers– especially the new comers. What is the alternative working standard for the AI agentic bot-led traffic optimization? Does “ranking” even matter in AI agentic-led online search? Should we then create websites specifically for bot traffic without human interface/UI?
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