Google Search was a doorway to the web. Now it owns more of the road.

Google earned trust through fast, sparse results that sent people to the web. The modern search page has competing jobs: answer the query, sell advertising, keep the searcher inside Google surfaces and incorporate AI-generated summaries. Those goals can coexist, but they do not automatically serve the reader or the publisher whose work supplied the answer.

In July 2026, the European Commission adopted measures specifying how Google must share anonymised search data with eligible competing search engines under the Digital Markets Act. The Commission says the goal is to make search alternatives more credible and reduce a competitive bottleneck held by a service with a long-standing dominant position in Europe.

The link is part of the answer

An AI overview can be useful when it helps a person decide what to read next. It becomes a poorer bargain when it substitutes for the source while making attribution, traffic and correction invisible. A healthy search ecosystem needs real outbound routes, clear advertising labels and a competitive way for new search services to improve.

Readers can keep direct bookmarks, RSS subscriptions and specialist sources for work they care about. Publishers should measure referrals rather than assuming a citation produces traffic. The broader standard is simple: the search engine should help people find the web, not make the web an unpaid annex to its answer box.