Cloudflare CEO: AI Is Killing the Business Model of the Web

In a recent interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that AI is breaking the economic model of the web by decoupling content creation from value, with platforms like Google and OpenAI increasingly providing answers without driving traffic to original sources. He argued that unless AI companies start compensating creators, the web's content ecosystem will collapse -- calling most current AI investment a 'money fire' with only a small fraction holding long-term value. Search Engine Land reports: Google's value exchange with content creators has collapsed, Prince said: 'Ten years ago... for every two pages of a website that Google scraped, they would send you one visitor.... That was the trade.... Now, it takes six pages scraped to get one visitor.' That drop reflects the rise of zero-click searches, which happen when searchers get answers directly on Google's search page. 'Today, 75 percent of the queries... get answered without you leaving Google.' This trend, long criticized by publishers and SEOs, is part of a broader concern: AI companies are using original content to generate answers that rarely/never drive traffic back to creators.

AI makes the problem worse. Large language models (LLMs) are accelerating the crisis, Prince said. AI companies scrape far more content per user interaction than Google ever has -- with even less return to creators. 'What do you think it is for OpenAI? 250 to one. What do you think it is for Anthropic? Six thousand to one.' 'More and more the answers... won't lead you to the original source, it will be some derivative of that source.' This situation threatens the sustainability of the web as we know it, Prince said: 'If content creators can't derive value... then they're not going to create original content.'

The modern web is breaking. AI companies are aware of the problem, and the business model of the web can't survive unless there's some change, Prince said: 'Sam Altman at OpenAI and others get that. But... he can't be the only one paying for content when everyone else gets it for free.' Cloudflare's right in the middle of this problem -- it powers 80% of AI companies and a 20-30% of the web. Cloudfaire is now trying to figure out how to help fix what's broken, Prince said. AI = money fire. Prince is not against AI. However, he said he is skeptical of the investment frenzy. 'I would guess that 99% of the money that people are spending on these projects today is just getting lit on fire. But 1% is going to be incredibly valuable.' 'And so maybe we've all got a light, you know, $100 on fire to find that $1 that matters.' You can watch a recording of the interview and read the full transcript here.

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