As Google’s AI-driven search experience expands, publishers and ecommerce brands are left fighting for visibility in a UI they no longer control.
Behind Google’s sunny AI product rollout lies a brutal shift: publishers get scraps while Alphabet eats the meal.
Google search is becoming an AI app engine — and the open web is collateral damage
Sundar Pichai says Google’s new AI Mode will “give more context.” News publishers say it’s theft. And operators? We’re stuck watching Google build a gated AI app store on top of our content while preaching openness.
In a recent Decoder interview, Pichai laid out Google’s next AI-powered phase: “AI Mode” — a search experience that builds interactive results, visualizations, and custom apps on the fly. It’s now live for all U.S. users, and Google plans to slowly “graduate” its features into the default search experience.
This isn’t just a UI refresh. It’s a platform shift that rewires how users interact with the web — or more accurately, how AI agents interact on their behalf.
The catch: AI Mode is built on scraped content, and publishers are pissed
The News Media Alliance didn’t mince words: calling AI Mode “theft” and demanding DOJ intervention. Their rage isn’t philosophical — it’s economic. AI Mode answers user questions directly, summarizing content from multiple sources without sending traffic back.
Pichai’s defense? “We’re sending more traffic to more places,” and the web is “45% bigger than two years ago.” But he didn’t provide hard traffic referral data comparing AI Mode to classic SERPs — just vibes and vague references to “quality referral traffic.”
That’s cold comfort for media brands seeing traffic and ad revenue flatline while Google hoards user attention inside AI-wrapped search boxes.
Why ecommerce founders should care
Because your content, your product listings, your blog posts — they’re all part of the same data layer Google is reformatting into AI outputs.
Pichai admits this shift will make websites function more like “databases” for AI agents. The web, in his words, becomes a backend. AI is the frontend. That’s a disaster for brands who rely on owning the customer journey — from awareness to checkout.
If Google is now the UI layer and Gemini is the concierge, what happens when your brand is just a line item in a multi-source AI answer?
The “agent web” is coming — but who pays the toll?
Pichai compared it to restaurants deciding whether to offer takeout: you don’t have to support AI agents scraping your services — but you risk losing market share if you don’t.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi already floated the idea of charging AI agents a toll to access their systems. That model will absolutely hit ecommerce next. Think Shopify stores negotiating API access with OpenAI agents or Google Gemini.
This is how the web splinters: pay-to-play APIs for agents, content tax for publishers, and a digital middle class of operators stuck rebuilding their funnel in someone else’s UI.
Why Sundar doesn’t care (and why you should)
Pichai is betting this AI platform shift will be bigger than mobile — and he might be right. But “bigger” doesn’t mean “better for everyone.” Just like Apple built the iPhone era on tight App Store control, Google is building the AI era on tighter grip over content, answers, and user flow.
He said it himself: “I don’t think we have comprehended what [AI creation] means… but that’s going to be true.”
Here’s what we comprehend: Google is building an AI-first internet where brands and publishers do the work, and Alphabet gets the checkout.
Operator POV: What to do now
✅ Audit your brand’s visibility inside Gemini and AI Mode results
✅ Explore agent-compatible product feeds — think headless commerce, structured data, direct APIs
✅ Own your customer — email, SMS, direct checkout is your moat
✅ Prepare for a world where the UI is AI, not your site
The real fight isn’t just over rankings anymore. It’s over representation in machine-generated outputs.
And if you’re not in that game, Google’s AI will gladly summarize you — and your margin — out of existence.
