Opinion: The end of the Internet as we know it

Have you noticed that the results of a Google search have been starting with an AI summary for a few weeks now? Which quite often provides exactly the answer you were looking for? This is Google's reaction to modern AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, which search the internet for current content and relieve users of the need to search the web themselves.

An opinion by Dr. Oliver Diedrich

Dr. Oliver Diedrich is editor-in-chief of iX. He is interested in Linux, open source, software development, the cloud and AI.

If you search with AI, you no longer have to google. The result: fewer searches on google.com. Google's answer: with the recently announced AI Mode, the search engine is transforming into a chatbot. Generative AI is good at summarizing content from different sources, so this is a logical development. The SEO industry is already sensing the morning air and developing ideas for AIO, i.e. website optimization for AI.

Will content still be worthwhile?

However, the creators of the content that the AI digests and spits out in an appetizing format will not benefit. Until now, the deal was: Google gets the content and directs users to the website in return. There, search engine traffic can be monetized, for example through online advertising or the sale of products. The AI summaries hide the links to the sources in inconspicuous footnotes and are often so good that you don't even have to click on them. In the USA, where AI summaries have been around for some time, many online publishers are already complaining about a significant drop in traffic. We are also noticing this effect on heise.de.

But this is not primarily about the publishers, who can take legal action against Google, put pressure on politicians and, in the worst case, find new business models that work without search engine traffic. But the "content versus visitors" deal is also important for many private and part-time blog and website operators. Because what motivates people to write their knowledge on the web? To be found and read. This applies to the operators of blogs on niche topics, as well as to people who answer questions on Reddit, Stack Overflow (who have had a different kind of problem with AI for some time) or in the heise online forum.

If the AI now grabs the content and presents it already nicely prepared on google.com, chatgpt.com etc., the readers will stay away. Who will still create content for the web if it only serves as AI fodder? Ultimately, this will impoverish the internet. That its current function as a source of information for every topic, no matter how exotic, will be lost.

Those who only use the big platforms from TikTok to YouTube and the websites of the big publishers may not care. But those who value the internet for its diversity and for its original idea of giving everyone the opportunity to publish and find readers: We need to worry. The AI Internet will be different from the one we know.

This commentary is the editorial of the new iX 7/2025, which will be published on June 27.

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