If you follow my writing, you know how I feel about AI Overviews. So I was surprised to read that Professional Publishers Association openly writes that Google "steals" content. Now publishers have a deleterious weapon to fight back.
Hi, my name is Tom Smykowski. I've spent 19 years building production systems and now focus on AI-assisted development. On this blog I share insights on AI, engineering, and the future of software development
I guess if Professional Publishers Association writes in face that Google steals content, we can actually use this terminology for what Google does. So far I was writing that Google reproduces content, but stealing sounds cool too.
Here's the exact quote from PPA:
"Google in particular has destroyed the quid pro quo that has underpinned its relationship with publishers by stealing traffic via AI Overviews"
Ch'est l'vie. That's what happens when a trillion-dollar corporation decides your work belongs to them.
900 Articles Stolen
900 articles. That is the number of articles I've published on Medium. Behind paywall. And guess what? Google took them and gives access to them for free on its website. So no longer I earn from my work, but a trillion dollar corporation does.
Medium ignores it, and doesn't care about it. Not only I earn like $2 from an article, but I can only publish one or two articles per day which is ridicolous. Anyways, Medium is dead for me.
I'm moving to my blog, and there I have protection against scraping. First and foremost articles are behind a real paywall. I'm also developing Maberium, a page where authors will be able to publish articles not having to worry Google will "steal" them.