Matthew Prince, chief exec of Cloudflare, and in London this week, He’s been deep into the weeds with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) pushing big picture regulatory measures aimed at Google’s chokehold in search and artificial intelligence (AI). Prince’s visit underscores his concerns over how Google’s extensive market power creates an uneven playing field in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Prince argues that Google, which currently holds a commanding position in search, possesses an unfair competitive advantage in the AI sector. He has been quite vocal on the need for stricter rules on what Google should and shouldn’t do as it enters the AI race. Prince argues that the CMA’s decision to go after Google is a clever opening gambit. Looking ahead this decision shows the federal government’s commitment to taking a stronger stance on addressing key priorities.
Prince continued, “Google wants to argue that they have a God-given right to everything on the planet—an entitlement even when they don’t pay for it—because of what they’ve done for the last 27 years. He went on to stress the importance of Google’s crawler, or spider, in search. It fuels the artificial intelligence (AI) technologies the company is building to run its logistics operation.
They claim that we can repurpose the same crawler that we all depend on search. That’s how we’ll supercharge the AI underpinnings of our future smart world! If you want to choose out of one, you have to choose out of both,” he said. This situation presents a significant challenge for media businesses that wish to protect their content from being scraped without compensation.
Blocking Google’s crawler complicates this picture further. Perhaps most importantly, it can unintentionally upend the advertisements in the pipeline that would be monitored by Google’s ad safety squad. “But it gets even worse. If you block Google’s crawler, it blocks their ad safety team, which means that your advertisements across all of your platforms stop working, which is just a non-starter,” Prince added.
To tackle these issues, Cloudflare recently introduced a marketplace allowing websites to collect fees from AI bots that scrape their content. That’s why we’re excited that this innovative solution has already found adopters like Neil Vogel’s company, People, Inc. Cloudflare’s model allows websites to generate revenue from AI companies that utilize their content while maintaining control over how their information is accessed.
In an illustration of Cloudflare’s power across the industry, about four-fifths of AI companies are now its clients. Prince argues that encouraging real competition in the marketplace would go far in solving most all concerns around AI and content accessibility. He envisions a landscape where thousands of AI companies could compete to purchase content from various media outlets and millions of small businesses.
Neil Vogel, CEO of DotDashMeredith, agreed with Prince that AI changes the relationship content owners have with users and with what they create. He revealed that negotiations are underway with several large language model (LLM) providers as part of their strategy to navigate these changes. People, Inc. makes history as the largest digital and print publisher in the United States. With more than 40 media brands in its portfolio, the company keeps a close eye on what AI is doing to content distribution.
Cloudflare’s new marketplace system is intended not just to break free the content creators, but to make sure they get paid consistently for their creations. The platform has officially launched and is continuing to build momentum. Perhaps most importantly, it provides a model which other companies can follow as they work to address the same challenges.
Even if you’re not directly involved, the conversation about AI regulation is picking up steam. Join industry leaders at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco to take place from October 27-29, 2025. This event will be an important venue for debates about the technology versus regulation debate.