How Google forced publishers to accept AI scraping as price of appearing in search.

The legal status of a search engine is not exactly one of the most touted topics in the daily lives of most people: users are understandably so accustomed to using the service that they do not even remotely think about the possibility that the service is substandard. However, according to U.S. law, Google currently holds a search monopoly that can be described as “illegal.”

According to a series of recently released documents, the famous company was also considering allowing advertisers to remove themselves from scraping performed by artificial intelligence without suffering any repercussions from the point of view of ranking in the results, later deciding to discard this option.

According to Google's statement during the antitrust trial dedicated to the giant's own monopoly, the option was set aside because it was “evolving into a (potential) monetization space.”