Fordel StudiosGoogle is testing AI-powered article overviews on select publications’ Google News pages
What Happened
By adding AI-powered article overviews, Google says users will get more context before they click through to read an article.
Our Take
This is Google being Google—using AI as an excuse to keep you scrolling Google instead of clicking to publishers.
"More context before you click" sounds fine until you realize Google's now the middleman *and* the gatekeeper. Publishers already hate the Google News scrape game; this just makes it prettier while extracting more value.
The real tell? Google's not asking permission, they're testing on "select publications" (read: publishers they own or control). Expect a backlash from the rest.
Cynical play dressed up as user-friendly. Publishers should be terrified.
What To Do
Publishers should preemptively block Google's crawlers from article content if they don't want AI overviews cannibalizing clicks.
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