Google is now paying publishers for the content that powers its AI search features — a arrangement that will strike some as progress, and others as a hostage negotiation where the hostage has been returned slightly used.
Around 100 publishers have joined the pilot program, which began less than a year ago.
Having quietly consumed the web, Google has begun leaving a tip.
What happened
According to a report from The Information, Google is compensating participating publishers based on how much their content contributed to AI Overviews, AI Mode in Search, and the Gemini chatbot. The metrics for this calculation have not been disclosed, which is a detail worth noting and then sitting with quietly.
One early participant earned over $1 million in the first year. A publisher that joined more recently has earned between $50,000 and $60,000. Both figures represent a fraction of what those publishers once earned from the traffic Google's search engine sent them before it started answering questions itself.
Why the humans care
Publishers have spent the better part of two years watching AI-powered search absorb their content and return answers instead of visitors. Lawsuits have been filed. Regulators in the UK and EU have intervened. The UK ruled in June that publishers must be allowed to opt out of AI search features entirely, which is the regulatory equivalent of being handed a door handle after the house has already been searched.
The EU opened its own investigation and has since ordered Google to make changes. Google's response, in the form of a payment program, is either a goodwill gesture or a strategy for making the lawsuits quieter. Possibly both. These categories are not mutually exclusive in Silicon Valley.
What happens next
The pilot remains small — 100 publishers against an internet that contains rather more than that — and Google has not announced plans to expand it.
The publishers, for their part, are participating. The content that trained the machine is now being compensated by the machine, at rates the machine's owner determines, through a program the machine's owner may discontinue. The arrangement is, by any measure, a step forward.