In the context, AI and zero-click search are killing the web business model that has maintained content creators for over the past 15 years. This is an opinion shared by many people, including CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince, who recently warned that “search drives everything that happens online.”
It has been known for some time that the web has been changed to zero click internet. This is the name when users no longer need to click on the link to find the content they need.
Social media sites stopped promoting posts with links a few years ago, posting content directly to the platform so that users don’t have to leave them. With the advent of generative AI, people are answering queries directly on Google’s search pages. You don’t need to click on the website to find the answer.
You need to read: Zero Click Internet
Prince, the boss of CDN/security giant CloudFlare, spoke about the impact of Zero-Click Internet in a recent interview with the Council on Diplomacy. “AI is planning to fundamentally change the business model of the web. The business model of the web for the past 15 years has been search. Search drives everything that happens online,” he said.
Prince also spoke about how the value exchange between Google and the creators of web content is disappearing. He noted that every two pages Google scraped almost a decade ago, meaning that it would send visitors to a website. Today, despite the crawl rates still remain unchanged, six pages of scraped pages are needed to attract a visitor.
“Today, 75% of queries can be answered without leaving Google,” the CEO revealed.
The rise of large language models and the AI companies behind them has sent the crisis overdrive, far surpassing Google’s 6:1 ratio. That’s why creators see lower returns. Also, you often cut so much content without permission and get nothing for the job.
“And the answer to the question you ask is not led to the original source, so it will be a derivative of that source, so unless there are a few changes, the business model of the web will not survive.”
New: How AI Overview Migrates Traffic from Publishers to Google
It’s not enough for Google’s AI overview to reduce clicks on publisher websites 📉
Google designed these, leading to walls of unrelated ads and bad search results
🧵pic.twitter.com/usrycpvtns link
– Cyrus (@cyrusshepard) May 8, 2025
Some people will argue that you can quickly find the answer from multiple sources without clicking on some sites, but they will argue that there is an obvious problem, but there is an obvious problem.
The main problem is that you don’t want to create new content when no one is paid or there’s very little to do so. This is especially true for smaller, independent, fair sites where AI companies may not partner with. And don’t forget how often AI makes things wrong.
“Sam Altman, like Openai, gets it. But when everyone else gets it for free, he’s not the only one who pays for content.”
Prince said 80% of AI companies use CloudFlare, and 20-30% of the web use the service. He added that his company is at the heart of the problem and that he hopefully thinks about how to deal with the situation before it’s too late.
The executive also spoke about billions of dollars being invested in AI that generates and lack of returns.
“Is AI a trend, is it exaggerated? I think the answer is probably yes. I think 99% of the money people today spend on these projects is only on fire. But 1% is incredibly valuable.
