London, UK – Matthew Prince, Chief Executive Officer of web infrastructure provider Cloudflare, met with the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in London this week, advocating for stricter regulations concerning Google's competitive practices within the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. Prince's proposals center on what he describes as Google's use of a unified web crawler for both its search engine and AI products, which he argues creates an unfair market advantage.
Prince's discussions with the CMA follow the regulator's earlier designation of Google with a "substantial and entrenched" position in the search and advertising markets. This status grants the CMA broader authority to impose regulations beyond traditional search and advertising, potentially extending to areas such as Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Tech conference in London, Prince stated that Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to offer recommendations, noting, "We don't have a dog directly in the fight. We're not an AI company." He further explained that Cloudflare's network sits between AI companies and media publishers, serving approximately 80% of AI firms as customers. This advocacy follows Cloudflare's earlier launch of a marketplace designed to allow websites to monetize their content by charging AI bots for scraping.
Prince asserted that Google utilizes its existing web crawler to collect content for both its AI services and search engine, which he characterized as giving the company an "unfair advantage." He detailed that content providers are often presented with a choice: allow Google to crawl for both search and AI, or opt out of both, which significantly impacts revenue streams for many, particularly media businesses that rely on search traffic for an estimated 20% of their income. Prince also highlighted that blocking Google's crawler also deactivates its ad safety team, affecting advertising functionality across platforms.
Cloudflare has reportedly provided the CMA with data illustrating Google's crawler mechanisms and the challenges other AI entities, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and Perplexity, face in replicating Google's access to content. Neil Vogel, CEO of People, Inc., a major U.S. digital publisher, has echoed these sentiments, publicly calling Google a "bad actor" for combining its crawlers, which he said gives media companies limited choice in allowing AI content crawling.
Prince indicated that fostering increased competition, where a diverse array of AI companies could purchase content from numerous media and small businesses, represents a viable path forward. He commended the CMA's proactive stance in identifying Google as a potential regulatory target, suggesting it indicates an awareness of Google's unique market position.
