#351 – Is Affiliate SEO Finally Dead??

In today’s episode of the Authority Hacker
Podcast, we’re diving into what might be

the biggest shake up in SEO this year.

Google’s massive crackdown on some of
the Internet’s biggest names.

Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNN.

These publishing giants just got hit
with site reputation abuse penalties

and have lost much or most
of their affiliate traffic.

In the case of Forbes Advisor, they’ve
been completely de indexed from Google.

But here’s where this
gets really interesting.

This isn’t just another Google Update.

It’s happening right as the Department
of Justice is moving to force Google

to sell Chrome and OpenAI is secretly
developing their own browser.

Plus, we’ve got major publishers
banding together to track and monetize

how AI uses their content.

See the pattern here?

The landscape of search
is transforming before our eyes.

The rules that worked for publishers
yesterday, they’re crumbling today.

And whether you’re running a small site
or managing a major publication,

you need to understand what’s coming.

I’m joined today by my co host and co
founder, Gael Breton,

and we’re breaking down why Google is
finally going after these big sites

and what’s happened to the search results
now that they have,

what the new browser war means for your
SEO and business strategy,

and how AI is reshaping the entire game
of content creation and monetization

in ways that people are only
just beginning to realise.

This is one episode that you
do not want to miss.

Welcome back to the
Authority Hacker Podcast.

Today we have a number
of very interesting stories.

There’s been a lot going on in the world
of search and AI over the last few weeks

and I want to start, Gael,
by talking about Forbes Advisor,

which is a site or a part of a site
that most SEOs kind of have learned

to love to hate over the years.

Kind of like a meme, right?

It’s like Forbes Advisor is basically
an SEO meme at this point.

It’s like oh, like Google anything
and they’re just going to rank for it.

Well, not anymore apparently, right?
Not at all.

Because what’s happened is Forbes
Advisor, who we should point out

is a separate legal entity.

They’re a company within a company.

Now Forbes, the parent company
does own a percentage.

I think it’s 30 or 40% of Forbes Advisor.

But Forbes Advisor is responsible for most
of the affiliate content on Forbes.

com and there’s a lot of it.

Wasn’t that a story as well
that they wanted to buy Forbes.

com because they got so
big from the so successful.

That they wanted to do that?

Yeah, which just shows you how much money
they’ve been they’re making.

And they’ve been expanding
this to other sites as well,

which we’ll cover in a sec.

But some of the content that
Forbes Advisor has put on Forbes.

com, which is a business news
site, remember is best credit cards,

which you know, not too.

Bad for business sites, it’s not a.

Million miles away from the site topic
but they also cover a lot

of health topics and they were ranking
for best CBD products number one

for a long time actually.

Well all these execs are like so
stressed, they need to relax

at some point, you know,
so it’s like it’s relevant, you know.

And for years, I mean Google
did nothing about this.

Forbes Advisor grew to
over 20 million monthly visits

and most that’s just the Advisor section.

That’s not all of Forbes by the way.

It’s high value visits as well.
Exactly.

These are people who are right
at that buying decision making point.

They’re searching for what is
the best product I can purchase to do X

and Forbes Advisors is serving them.

So anyway, on 24th of September
of this year 2024 they started to lose

a bit of traffic and there were
some murmurings around the SEO space that

they’d been received a manual penalty.

Some people said that was true,
some people said that that

wasn’t actually the case anyway
it was in a little bit of a decline.

Then their Ahrefs graph
shows them jumping up again.

I’m not quite sure what happened there,
only to be completely

deindexed on the 19th of November.

So to be clear, all of the content
on the Advisor subdirectory of Forbes

has been de indexed from Google.

You cannot find it on Google
and they’ve lost I think 15

to 20 million monthly visits from Forbes.

com on ahrefs.

And there’s more to come.

Like, not all of it’s
been fully crawled yet.

So we’re looking at about 25 million
monthly page views loss.

Can I just get your reaction to that?
Like, no.

The funny part is it’s not even the fact
that they got deindexed or not the index,

it’s the fact that Google
had no problem ranking them number one

for everything for years.

Like we’re talking like three, four,
five years ranking for the advisor

for pretty much any best keyword
that they would write for.

To be like, no,
this is not even worth being indexed

in our search engine anymore.

And it’s like, it’s revealing of
how Google works, which it’s quite easy

to point fingers at people
who get penalised by these things

or lose a lot of traffic, et cetera.

But Google works that way.

They reward you heavily
for doing something and then

the next day they snap their fingers.

It’s like Thanos,
you’re gone, you get nothing.

They just know half measure
of like you lose 20% or 30%.

These updates these days,
they just heavily reward you and then

they just take everything away overnight.

Which is why people are really
struggling to justify investing in SEO

because of the volatility, basically.

And that’s like a prime example of that.

And that’s why Google sucks these days.

What was this, though?

Objectively, like,
forget everything Google’s done

in the past, they’ve done it.

Yeah, in November 2024.

Was it a good move
for them to pull this off?

Has it changed anything?

I mean, I did some searches, right?

It’s like part of me, I was like,
okay, who’s there still?

Who has taken their place?

And to be frank, what I’m finding
is there’s less of these big newspapers

that write about everything,
except maybe Wirecutter is still around,

for example, things like that.

But it’s much more specialised sites
that I’m finding to rank for the thing.

So it’s like if you Google
about supplements, you will still

have large publishers, but it’s going
to be very well, health or that kind

of stuff that is actually about health.

And then you Google about business topics
and it’s going to be business

sites, even though they have
a review section, et cetera.

So it’s like to me, it felt like this,
like they’re finally enforcing the like,

stay in your lane thing where it’s like
it’s kind of allowed to do affiliate

content, but if you go too far,
they’re just going to,

they’re just going to catch you.

But it Looks like basically Google
does not control the upper end

of their algorithm.

And when you reach a certain level
of authority, you get to rank

for everything and then they just
have to manually correct for it.

Which is.

Which look is looking
like what they’ve done with this.

It doesn’t look like very algorithmic
for most of it.

Right.

I want to give you a bit
of a challenge here.

So I looked up the top three pages
by page value which Forbes had lost.

This is page value within ahrefs.

So I want you to guess what those topics
were, top three that they’ve lost

over the last six months.
I mean, CBD has to be up there, right?

It’s like.

It’s like CBD credit cards, like, so,
best CBD supplement, Best credit card.

And did they write about mattresses
that could be one as well?

Like best mattress for
back sleepers or something?

I’m just thinking, what’s the
highest value affiliate programmes

they could have written for?
Right.

And then it has lots of search volume.

So I’ve got them here.

The first was best payroll services.
Okay.

These are kind of online
SaaS tools for payroll.

But that’s almost relevant
for Forbes, which is crazy.

You could argue that.

Yeah, I mean, they’ it’s relevant
for their clients.

It’s not so much relevant
for, like, business news.

Okay.

You know, the second one
was best voiceover IP services.

Okay, interesting.

I don’t think that’s the ones that
they made the most money from, maybe.

Because the value in Ahrefs is ppc.
Right.

It’s like the cost per click
and they just calculate if you

bought the traffic from AdWords.

But the problem is like, the affiliate
programme value is not included in this.

Absolutely, absolutely.
But there will be a correlation here.

But it was just interesting
because these were significantly higher

than most of the others.

The third highest one
was best SEO services.

Okay, Makes sense.
I mean, it makes sense.

The SEO industry is like a big
industry, but again, it’s because a lot

of SEO agencies advertise for this.
Right.

It’s like, funnily enough,
SEO agencies have to buy AdWords

to promote themselves.

Therefore, the price
of AdWords is very high.

The.

Therefore the value
in Ahrefs is very high.

The thing is, you can make money
by promoting these things, but

there’s no big, broad affiliate programme
for SEO agencies.

You kind of need a partnership
or something, which they may have.

It’s possible they have that.

But yeah, in my head,
it’s like CBD mattresses.

The stuff that really scales up probably
made them the most Money, even if

the value was high in Ahrefs, actually.

So you were talking earlier about
what’s replaced forbes on the SERPs.

So I went in and I had a look at
this specific keyword, best SEO services.

And six months ago you had Reddit,

you had two agencies, three newspapers,

Forbes and SEMrush on page

one, right now you have Reddit.

Actually, the first three results
are the local map pack,

the people also Ask section,
and the discussions and forum section.

So 1, 2 and 3, we’ve all obviously
got ads at the top of that.

Below that we’ve got Reddit, which is.
What would that be?

Number four, organic.

And then five through 10 are SEO
companies, individual SEO companies.

And this, I think is what I’m seeing
a lot of in the serps, not just in ones

that Forbes has lost, but in general,
these days, Google is not serving other

people who are talking about the thing.

They’re just trying to essentially give
you the answer, what best SEO services?

Like, well, here’s the best SEO services.

Google’s not saying that they’re giving
it, but they’re showing SEO services,

which they must somehow
think are the best.

I have no idea how they
make that decision.

But you know why they’re doing that?

Because they’re taking AI overview
into consideration for this.

So it’s like, the point is like, you know,
by the end of this year, a billion people

will have access to AI Overview.

So now it’s something that they
count with when they’re essentially

establishing the layout of a serp.
Right?

It’s counted.

And the thing is, like,
the informational part of that query

is going to be served by aio.

And if you want a list post,
I imagine they would be served as like,

sources for the AI overview, right?

And it’s like you click,
you’re like, I want a list.

Okay.
You click in the AIO sources and then.

Or you just read the AI overview and you
never click on the website and then they

basically have the ads and then they’re
like, well,

now we’ve served you the informational
pieces in the AI overview,

so the rest of the organic result will
probably be the thing you want to buy

directly because you’ve
already made that choice.

Do you think that’s what’s
happening right now, though?

Yeah, I see it everywhere.
Determined from it.

It’s happening to us too, right.
Ontario hacker.

We’ve lost a bunch of rankings
on affiliate programme lists.

We used to rank a lot for music,
affiliate programmes, SaaS, affiliate

programmes, stuff like that.

And it’s like we’re like, okay,
well did we do something wrong

with our pages or not?

And the more we’re looking, the more
we are actually not seeing other lists.

Like, everyone who does lists as well
is losing rankings right now.

And instead is the affiliate programmes
themselves that are ranking.

And it’s basically a deep change
in search intent for Google.

And it’s not something you
can quickly fix, right?

Unless we start spinning off affiliate
programmes ourselves, it’s not exactly

like we can take these rankings back.

So it sucks a bit.

But Google is just changing
like they’re making editorial decisions

in how they’re laying out the SERPs.

And that’s why it makes me
kind of like smile when I see people

talking about, oh, you can totally
recover from this, et cetera.

It’s not Google punishing you.

In many cases you will
still show up, et cetera.

It’s just Google decided we do not want
these list posts and these kind of like

informational posts anymore in the SERPs
that are commercial at least we are going

to put this in AIO reviews and.

And then the rest of the organic results
is like, we don’t want this anymore.

We put this other stuff, maybe
you get one or two and that’s it.

You know, I think this
is what Google said.

I can’t remember.

It was Danny Sullivan
said when he was talking.

I think it was one
of these creator summits with

all the people that got hit complaining.

He was basically saying,
you are unlikely to recover to

the same extent as you were before.

And people took that as, oh, well,
they’re not reversing the algorithm,

it’s, it’s changing it.

But no one really kind of clocked on to.

It’s not just everyone’s been thumped
in an update, but like it’s not possible.

There are no slots for exactly
your type of content to be able to rank

in those on page one at all anymore.

It’s basically AI replacing you
as a content creator for

informational queries specifically.

So it’s like you want to rank in Google.

You need to be the solution
to a problem, you not the one

pointing at the solution to a problem.

So if you make a list of solutions,
they want AI to replace you

if you are the solution.

So if you are the service that people are
looking for, if you are the product

they’re looking for,
then they’re looking to rank you up,

which is why Ecom is doing well,
which is why services companies are doing

well, which is agency are doing well
because they are a solution to a problem.

And Google is starting
to serve them more in the serps.

And so, like, listing solutions
was a very valuable, like, as I said,

something that was very valuable
and drove a lot of traffic in the past.

And Google rewarded you heavily for that.

So a lot of people,
including us, did that.

But it’s changing.

And the truth is like, the more
I talk to people, the more they’re like,

well, I don’t even use Google,
I’m using ChatGPT anyway for this stuff.

And then it’s just like
branded queries that are coming up.

Like, I think Ren Fishkin made
a post about this recently

where he’s like, 40% of Google queries
are now essentially branded searches.

Which means like people are finding about
the, about the brand somewhere else,

which is social media, chatbots,
whatever it is, then they go to Google

and they type the brand and they go
on the site and people essentially

attribute the conversion
to Google traffic.

But really what people used Google
for is literally just the address bar.

Like instead of typing the URL,
they type the brand and they click on

the first result, which is the brand.

Unless someone buys ads.

Do you think then that people
are now using AI to do that?

Previously people were using Reddit
to do that or Google to search Reddit

to find that and then kind of
coming back to Google for the product.

So it’s really kind of,
it’s gone from finding information

to just finding companies.

Now pretty much it’s just like basically
before you buy something, before you make

a decision, you kind of like
search for information about it.

Then you go on the website and you buy.

Right before you would find information
from articles that rank on Google.

Now more and more you find this
on YouTube, you find this on Instagram,

you find this on TikTok,
and you find this on Chatbot.

Increasingly and eventually people just
make that journey directly

to the website when they’ve decided
this is for me, uh, and they actually

just, just buy the product.

So it’s like, and that’s why we’ve been
saying for months that you need a product

because if you don’t have a product,
you cannot be the solution AI

or social media points at.

And so like, if you’re this in middle,
like this in between guy,

that’s when you suffer the most.

And that’s why like, even
like I’m, I’m not bullish at all

on content sites at this point because,
because of that, because essentially AI

is just going to do a better job.

Like ChatGPT knows about you, has memory
about you, knows your problems.

Know all of that and they have search
built in now, et cetera.

It’s just not, there’s no way you’re going
to beat that with a content site.

And if you want like authentic
information, I’m sorry but like Instagram

and TikTok and YouTube are better places
than a blog at this point, you know.

And so like yeah, it’s like people
who are like, oh, but they’re not

going to have information to feed the AI.

Yes they will from social media
and a lot of people create and they’re.

Cutting all these deals.

OpenAI and even Google cutting these deals
with Reddit and other sources as well.

You know, obviously Facebook has its
access to or Meta has access to Facebook

and Instagram and all the threads.
100%.

OpenAI scraped YouTube illegally.

Like when they asked the CTO about how
they made Sora and they asked if they

scraped YouTube,
she like that’s kind of like a meme online

on like how basically she could not answer
the question because they obviously did it

right, they scraped YouTube and they
have the YouTube information.

And so like this idea that ah,
if we don’t publish on our website

there will be no information to train AI.

I think it’s, it’s very biassed because
the truth is people post a lot more

on social media already than
they post on websites and that’s going

to be the main source of training data.
This.

So this story wasn’t just
limited to Forbes though there were

many other big publishers here as well.
I’ve got a list.

The Wall Street Journal’s
buy side is 81% down.

CNN underscored, which
was actually CNN Underscored,

was linked to Forbes Advisor.

I think the same entity
was publishing content on, on both

and was responsible for both.

63% decline there.

Fortune recommend 72% decline, big drop.

That’s like HTU level.

Yeah, this, this one,
Time magazine, 97% decline.

And Newsweek, Vault, Independent Advisor,
the Sun Shopping, like all of these got,

got hit and it’s all centred around this
site reputation abuse which Google first

published in their spam documentation.

And yeah, back in March when
the core update rolled out then

and conveniently they gave, they
were like, oh, we’ve given big publishers

two months to adhere to this.

No such warning for any small publishers
over the last year, year and a half.

No, they just did it right away.
Right.

A little bit of a two tier system
there, don’t you think?

Yeah but at the same time, you know, it’s
like Google has always given a pass to

big sites because they need them, right?

They need them to get better results.

And so like there’s a
much more of a dependency here

than there is on small sites.

But at least you cannot give them shit for
not doing the thing they said for once.

They actually just destroyed them.

Now the question is like, it looks like a
lot of these are manual penalties, right?

And manual penalties, you can appeal
to them inside search console, right?

And then you can essentially
try to fix things.

And quite often Google restores a good
chunk of your rankings when you do that.

So the question and the thing
to observe going forward is what’s going

to happen when they actually
do these appeals and do these sites

recover any kind of rankings?
Right.

And actually it’s quite interesting
because Lily Ray tweeted about that.

So Lily Rae, she’s like this essentially
SEO influencer, but she works for a big

agency in New York and she works for
a lot of these big publications, right?

She helps them both with
Google Discover and with SEO, right.

And basically it looks like the first
round of the consideration request has

been processed by Google and a lot of them
got denied,

even though a lot of that content was
written by first party writers,

which means, you know, Forbes writers,
maybe not in the case of Forbes,

but like the publications writers were
writing the reviews and they still got

denied, essentially
a reinclusion in the index.

And so is that because they were
too far off the core topic

of the site or for some other reason?

We don’t really know.
Right.

It’s not exactly like they
give you a huge detailed answer

when they give you these things.

It’s kind of like cryptic
and you need to be.

It’s a bit like an oracle
and you have to read between

the lines because they don’t,
especially for these big companies.

It implies whatever Google
says, it can be used legally

against them in a court or something.

So they’re very, very careful
in how they word these things

and they’re very vague basically.

But basically she’s basically
saying that it looks like the main issue

is just that these publications
have affiliate content at all.

And she was a little bit enraged at it,
which is interesting because small sites

have been saying that for literally a year
and a half and there has been a bit

of a war between agency SEOs that work
for big publications

and big sites and essentially the smaller
sites and they’ve been pointed at when HCU

happened, like, oh, you have too many ads,
oh, like you don’t have

enough yeti, et cetera.

And now we’re seeing the same thing
happen to these Big sites

essentially that’s Big Sites hq.

That’s happening right now.

Yeah, that’s literally what it is.

And they literally have all these things
that these big SEOs were pointing at the

small sites for not having and the same
thing’s happening to them anyway.

And now they’re starting to understand
that Google is actually being very

biassed against that kind of content.

I don’t know why Google is so biassed
against affiliate content, but obviously

they don’t want too much of it
in their search results at this point.

So just to be clear here, you’re talking
about things like how they have all these

review panels and all of the credibility
EIT aspects on their site but they still

got hit presumably because they are doing
too much affiliate thing or.

We’re not really exactly sure.

We’re not exactly sure
and they won’t tell you for sure.

Like it’s.

But you know, it looks
like a political decision.

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And there’s been some backlash as well
against some of the SEO kind of auditors,

I guess, if you want to call them that,
back at this creator summit was it

that Google invited a bunch of people to
and it didn’t go down so well, I heard.

Yeah, I mean it’s kind of like sad
because you kind of see the industry

tearing itself apart as essentially
tension rises and some people are

struggling more than others, et cetera.

And then it’s like it’s evening out
so people are kind of like, ah, you see,

like you were wrong too, et cetera.

But yeah, there was Nate Hake
who owns Travel Lemming.

com who got hit heavily by HCU,
and that was very, very vocal about it.

And it’s kind of like leading
the charge against Google

stealing traffic, basically.

But he was talking about how people
criticise Marie Haynes, which is like

another popular SEO, more on the agency
side and consulting side, et cetera.

That was kind of like auditing
small sites that got hit on Twitter.

You could argue for exposure, like,
and essentially sold expensive audits

to a lot of these sites
that ended up never recovering.

Right.

And I think the content of a lot of
these audits, I don’t know Marie Haynes

audit specifically, but from.

From what I’ve seen from, from others,
it tended to be, well, hey, look,

your small affiliate site doesn’t
do all of these things which Forbes

and these other big sites do.

So that’s why lost traffic
and almost justified.

The reason Nate is so mad at it is because
essentially people like that just

justified the fact that these sites got
hit and then they went to the Google HQ

and then you still even starts
the conference by saying, look,

it’s not your fault, it’s our fault,
we kind of messed up.

And so that kind of like,
essentially makes these SEOs

look like patronising to small sites and
it looks like they’re better, et cetera.

And so I can see a lot of small creators
not looking at them that worked for these

big sites and the same things happening,
despite them having all the things they

recommended in their audits and so on.

And so it’s really exposing a lot
of the SEO industry’s best practises

as essentially being useless
in these kind of cases.

And it’s very much an editorial decision
by Google rather than you doing

something wrong with your site.

Because even the sites with the most money
and the most resources

trying to essentially
protect their asset as best as possible.

Because, you know, Forbes Advisor
wanted to keep their rankings, they made

lots of money from it, they tried to put
all the eat the schema, all that stuff,

et cetera, that didn’t help them.

And so I think that’s the ultimate case
for like, yeah, all this stuff

is not that relevant anymore.

Maybe it was at some point.

And it’s like, I don’t
fully blame the SEO.

Are you saying this is
like a underlying business model?

Both, I mean, a bit.
Right.

You know, your site, not you,
but like someone’s site and also

Google’s business model that
is changing quite dramatically a lot.

Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing.
It’s like Google’s business model.

Google is threatened
by ChatGPT, plain and simple.

Like, it’s like AI is threatening
their search business, they’re making

lots of money from ads, et cetera.

So they’re doing things
they’ve never done before.

And so like SEOs,
they learn from patterns, right?

They look at what happened in the past
and the way you would recover

from a core update before was like
auditing your website, pruning content,

doing all these things, et cetera, which
it was legitimate for a very long time.

And so people repeated
the same kind of advice when

these HCUs happened, et cetera.

The thing is, now we’re seeing
that it doesn’t matter and that Google

is essentially doing things
they’ve never done before and

these patterns are broken.

And you cannot just
rely on past experience

to decide what’s good on Google anymore.

And so like it’s like that’s why I
don’t fully blame people like Mary Hines.

But at the same time I understand why
a lot of creators are quite sour about

the kind of advice that she’s giving
and also her charging quite a lot

of money for this kind of audits.

You know, there’s also been
some shenanigans I guess reported

on Twitter around Forbes specifically.

So there was an allegation that they
were moving content from the Advisor sub

directory to a portfolio subdirectory.

And there’s a few examples
there of them doing that.

And someone posted a thread tagging in

at Google Search Liaison to rat them out.

There was though a counterpoint.

My grandpa wouldn’t be for us
SEO experts, Cyrus shepherd,

that said that Forbes had started moving
content before they were actually hit

and then people were reacting to that,
saying, well, did they have some kind

of early warning or heads
up or things like that?

I mean, I’m a little bit dubious
as I don’t think they have

a direct line to Google as such.

But it’s worth
remembering that they had actually

been losing quite a bit of traffic
since like September, October time.

So it’s not surprising that they were
like starting to take some action there.

I think that’s maybe a bit
more of a coincidence.

I agree.
I think it’s risk mitigation, right?

It’s like they knew they saw some stuff
happening, they felt like,

we felt it like a lot of sites
started to lose team a little bit, etc.

They tried something different
like it’s an experiment that a lot

of large companies run lots
of experiments all the time.

I think that’s all it was.

I don’t think there was any kind
of conspiracy here and people like to

kind of like point at these things
and be like, ah, see, they’re treating

these sites differently, et cetera.

The fact that they got the indexed
shows that it’s like Google

is willing to go far.

The question is like, how long
do they stay the index for?

And do they just bring them back
in the index within two or three

months, which is possible.

And that’s when we can start
pointing fingers at Google and be like,

okay, what about the small sites?

Can they have the same thing, please?

Speaking of small sites, then, are
there any positive, is there any positive

impact from all this for small publishers
or is it just like a bit neutral?

Because I think a lot of people
were rejoicing when these sites got hit.

But if you look at what’s
replacing them, it’s not small

publishers, it’s businesses.

I mean, if you’re like a small niche
business, it’s positive as long as you’re

a business that sells something.

So it’s like you’re an SEO agency.

You’re more likely to rank for
SEO agency keywords now

than you were six months ago.

So in a way,
for the smaller guys, it’s a good news.

The bad news is you probably can’t rely
on the affiliate business to monetize

your small business anymore from Google.

Like, you can still make money
from affiliates, from YouTube, from all

these things, from your email, et cetera.

But ranking reviews on Google
is increasingly difficult.

And it’s something that I would not
spend a lot of effort doing now

because it’s clear, like,
look, they banned the biggest sites

that have the most resources.

It’s clear to be fair to Forbes
and some of the other sites

that were doing this, it wasn’t like all
of their content was universally bad.

Right?
Some of it was actually fairly well.

A lot of it was better
than the small sites.

Right.

It wasn’t amazing, but it’s not
like all small sites are amazing either.

And so it’s like, in some cases, you
could argue that even though it wasn’t

their core business, because
they put more resources behind it,

they would serve something a little bit
better than many small sites.

Not to the extent to which they ranked.

I think it was overrated.

And the domain metrics helped
a little bit too much here.

But yeah, but overall,
the way I see it is like, I don’t

see affiliate reviews doing.

I mean, they might do a little bit
better for small creators,

but the trend is still way down
compared to like, you know, zoom out,

look at two or three years, right?

It’s like, where are we
at compared to A few years ago.

It’s not exactly like this
changes everything because the slots

are not being replaced by a tonne
of other review sites, they’re being

replaced by actual businesses.

So it’s like, to me, this is a blip in
history and the trend is still the same.

That’s the way I look at it.

Okay, so let’s move on to our next
story, which is a bit of a doozy.

So back In August of 2024, Google
was declared an illegal monopoly

in the US and the ramifications
for that were the Department of Justice.

The dojo had been trying
to figure out what to do,

how to like punish them for this.

And the thing that they’ve come
up with is that they want to get Google

to sell or divest Chrome.

So if all goes to plan, and that’s
a big if because this is being appealed

vigorously, if it goes ahead, then Chrome
will no longer be owned by Google

and presumably become its own entity
or sold off or something like that.

This obviously has huge ramifications
for search for SEO for Google

as a company, and it’s development
of AI for ads specifically.

In fact, I think that’s,
that’s the biggest one, right?

That’s where we should start.

Because ads make up around 70%, maybe even
a bit more of Google’s total revenue.

That’s despite them creating
all these new devices and phones and,

you know, the Android Store
and their cloud services and all that.

That’s still a tiny
percentage of their inc.

So why do you think selling
or losing access to Chrome data

will have such a significant impact
on Google’s ability to serve ads?

I mean, basically the way
you can charge more for an ad is if it’s

being put in front of the right people
that click on the ad and end up buying

the thing you’re selling, right?

It’s like you tend
to advertise to sell something.

So it’s like if I tell you
that there’s 10% chance that someone

clicks on it and buys the product,
you’re willing to pay a lot more.

And if I tell you
there’s a 1% chance that people

click on it and buy the product, right?

So in order to actually
do that matching very well,

you need to know a lot about the user.

So you need to know which websites they’ve
been visiting, but not only, right?

Think about how TikTok works, for example,
like even stuff that you mouse over,

even stuff that you slow, like slow down
your scrolling over and start looking at,

et cetera, that is information that
Tells me, like, it’s interesting to you.

And it’s like if I start showing you
content related to that, then

you’re probably, you’re more likely
to essentially click and buy.

And so this, by the way, is just.

Sorry to interject, this, by the way,
is why so many people are convinced

that their phones are listening
to them, because when they talk

about vacuum cleaner, suddenly
they get ads for vacuum cleaners.

But it’s not that.

That’s actually been looked at very,
very closely and there’ve been loads

of studies on this and they’ve never
been able to prove it, but it’s just

because their ads targeting is so good.

They know all these like, micro actions
that someone looking for vacuum cleaners

will do on other types
of content, especially on things

like social media, as you said.

Yeah, and it’s like the thing with Chrome
is it’s kind of like a window into

like 90% of what you do on your computer.
Right?

It’s like most of the content you’re going
to consume, at least on desktop,

on mobile, quite different because
there’s different apps, et cetera.

And that’s why they have Android,
because it kind of makes up for that,

but it basically gives all these signals
similar to what TikTok has

and then that allows them to,
through essentially the pattern match.

Right?

So I’m like, oh, Gel and Mark,
they cheque the same kind of stuff.

And Mark, I know I have conversion data
from the AdWords pixel that he bought

like a new vacuum cleaner the other day.

So I’m going to show the ad for the
same vacuum cleaner to Geo, who has the

same browsing patterns and therefore his
chances of clicking and buying are high.

And so I can charge more for this ad.
Right?

And so that is, yeah,
Chrome and Android and then if they lose

that, they lose the ability to match
the ads with people and therefore they can

charge a lot less for ads because
the conversion rate is going to plummet

because they’re not going to be
able to match the ads with people.

So while Chrome on its own does not
make money, it is the engine that allows

the ad platform to make a lot of money.

And so that’s going to make
it quite challenging.

And now the thing as well is like,
well, what happens to Chrome?

Right.

One, you know, they become
their own browser and they sell the data

to anyone who pays for it,
including back to Google.

Including Google.

Which means like the ad engine doesn’t
break at this point, but it means,

for example, Meta now starts to have more
data than Google because They have their

own proprietary data from you using
Instagram and Facebook

and WhatsApp and everything.

Plus they can buy the Google data, see
what queries you typed and all of that.

Basically that’s actually
a very, very significant advantage

to Meta there because they already
have access to a huge amount of data

that Google, they don’t share.

They’re on par, even better
than Google in many ways for ads.

The two companies, by the way, make up
more than half of all digital ad spend

in the U.S. just those two companies.

And I think that power balance
would be affected quite significantly

by Meta having access to this data.

I’m even wondering if that doesn’t
make meta like too powerful

to let them access that data.

So I’m wondering if that doesn’t trigger
another like antitrust suit against Meta

following that, where they also have
to start sharing their data or something.

That could be a good defence in
Google’s appeal as to why this shouldn’t

happen because Meta will get, get hold
of it and it will be anti competitive.

But also, you know, Google
uses that data for search, right.

So they like we know that
they use the Snap Boost signal

that essentially uses clicks, etc.
And probably a lot.

So just, just, just to step in there.

If you haven’t heard of Nav Boost,
this was one of the ranking factors,

I guess you call it, which
was released in, earlier this year.

Not released, but uncovered when
someone else released against their will.

Yeah, the, the Google leaks, as they were.

And over on the Authority Hacker news
channel, we did a few videos about that

back in May and it’s what is Nav Boost
and what, what is the signal?

Kind of like say we don’t know exactly
how it’s used or whatever.

It’s just like an ingredient Google
has access to and then they can put it

in the recipe of the algorithm.

But that is basically
user engagement data.

Click data.
Yeah.

And so they need to get that data
from somewhere and it’s very likely

Chrome is one of the main ways
they collect that data together

with Android, together with maybe
Google Analytics or stuff like that.

I haven’t read the terms of service,
but think about Google services in general

and how they could get that data like
Gmail as well, like the stuff you click

on and so on that would probably feed
that data that is then used as part

of the algorithm to decide what ranks and
what doesn’t, which kind of makes sense.

We talked a lot about that in previous
podcasts where we see lots of creator

sites doing well in updates,
which they tend to have lots more brand

searches, et cetera and that kind
of stuff, and direct clicks

and clicks from Instagram and so on.

So you can imagine they
use all that data and they’re like,

oh, this is popular, let’s rank it up.

So yeah, if they use that for their search
algorithm, and what that means is part

of their competitive advantage
to being a better search engine.

Better search engine can be challenged
here, but you get the idea.

The point is all their competitors
could start having access to that data.

So the joke is like, oh, Bing’s going
to have access to it and it’s still

going to be a shit search engine anyway.

But imagine if OpenAI has
that data, for example.

So OpenAI is much more
of a threat to Google.

They’ve overtaken Bingo already
in traffic with ChatGPT.

And the search function
is not even free to everyone yet.

It will be next year.

But imagine if they start being able
to have access to Qlik data and they’re

able to see essentially what’s popular
and not popular on the Internet based

on what people click on and then use
that information as background

for AI answers in search, right?

So it’s like instead of just randomly
searching, they use Bing right now

they use the Bing API to actually
get data for your answers.

Research.

But what if they’re able
to see what people are actually

reading and liking online
and use that as the base for the AI?

And so they could serve
much better search results

with their search GPT than they do today.

And that would challenge
the search engine as well as the ads

would be challenged by meta.

So it’s like it’s really breaking up the
competitive advantage of Google on almost

all fronts when it comes to advertising.

You know, it’s knocking down
a very significant wall or moat

around what Google’s built and it affects
literally everything that Google does.

That’s why they’re so it’s a big deal.

Decent Android against this.

They’ve gone as far as to call it
radical interventionist agenda.

And Google claimed that this would alter
business models, increase device costs,

weaken Android’s competitive position
against Apple and complicate efforts

to maintain Chrome security.

Usual kind of lawyer speak
for, you know, when they’re trying

to influence public opinion and
why this would be so bad for the world.

But is it bad for the world
or is it just bad for Google?

I think short term it might
be bad for the user actually.

Mostly because, let’s say Chrome
becomes its own company, needs to

make its own money basically, right?

It’s like, sure, they can
sign A deal with Google.

But your data is not going
to be just given to Google anymore.

It’s going to be given
to anyone who buys the data.

And so like, essentially
you’re less private on the Internet

and your information, presumably.

Though, this is kind of
like it’s anonymized in a way.

It’s not like some Google employee
can come and look up your search.

No, that’s not how.

That’s not how it works.

But like, what it means is
you’ll be more bombarded with eyes.

You’ll like, you know,
it would be a bit more obnoxious

in the way you’re being sold.

This is actually a question I want
to ask because as someone who’s recently

gone through the transition to switch
to from Microsoft Windows to Apple and

From Android to iOS, I’m like inundated

with all these privacy options.

And like, honestly,
it’s been really difficult

as someone that grew up on Windows,
to figure out how I need to enable this

so I can get my freaking camera to work.

Because, like, I’m just used
to having no privacy on Windows, I guess.

So there’s a little bit inconvenient.

But I wanted to ask about the ad targeting
because there’s always this option

on Apple devices, ask app not to track.
Right.

And what that means is that app’s not
sending data back to wherever and they’re

not able to understand what we’re doing.

So does that just mean I
get the same amount of ads?

The ads are just, they’re just more.

Less relevant shitter and
less relevant to me, pretty much.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing
in the sense that I’m not squandering

as much money or a bad thing.

And it’s like, why is there a picture
of this is nothing.

I’m not interested in that.

It’s a bit of a different debate.

But privacy to Apple is, is a.

Is a product, basically.

It’s like it’s a way to justify them
charging more for the same thing.

And so like, the way they sell privacy
is pretty shitty in the sense

that it tends to make marketing
less relevant to the users

that leverage their privacy features.

So if you use Chrome on your Mac,
you’re not more private.

Like, they still get the data.

It’s only if you use Safari, for example.
Same with mail.

Like you need to use Apple Mail
to get the privacy features.

If you don’t, then your privacy
is pretty much the same as on the PC

and they really mess it up.

Like on email for Example, yeah,
they automatically open all emails

on Apple Mail,
so you cannot track a user’s activity

based on email and you might still email
them even though they haven’t opened

your emails for years, for example.

And that’s pretty annoying.

And you need to rely on things
like click data to actually fix that.

So it’s like.

I don’t want to go in that debate,
but, yeah, it’s not great.

Well, I’m sorry, I’m going in that debate.

Here’s a philosophical question for you.

Maybe this is one for the
philosopher philosophy podcasts.

Is it good for the world
that there’s wasted ad spend,

or does the world as a whole benefit?

If everyone advertising everywhere,
the cost per conversion is much lower.

Surely that means that the price
of things can come down, markets are more

efficient, it’s better to do that.

So my argument would be, I’m not 100%
for this, but I’m just saying that

if Chrome is divested, it’s
its own entity selling data to everyone.

Everybody’s advertising,
in theory, gets cheaper.

If you want a product, you spend less,
less money to advertise consumers.

You can in theory pass that saving
on to consumers if market forces work.

I know they don’t always.

Is it a good thing?

I mean, potentially the problem
is like how privacy is being sold

to the end user, right?

It’s like, basically people imagine just
looking at their Internet history

and reading their text messages and so
they imagine that’s how it works,

which nobody cares about your text
messages, but is being analysed

by essentially algorithms, AI,
which has been leveraged first before we

huddled ChatGPT, et cetera,
for ad targeting.

And that’s why Meta
is making record profit right now,

because they’ve been leveraging
their progress in AI for ad targeting.

And it’s also why Meta has very relevant
ads much more than other platforms,

because they have no privacy.

They’re like, just like
Google is all your data.

So, yeah, essentially
it’s better to share the data.

The problem is public perception
is so bad in terms of privacy, it’s

been painted as this really bad thing.

It’s very similar to nuclear energy
for the environment.

Basically how it’s been stigmatised.

The perception
is completely different from when.

It’S actually probably the
most practical way to actually maintain

our lifestyle while reducing emissions.

So it’s very, very similar.

Uh, and so for that reason
there is always a push for privacy

because it gives you market share and
because it wins you political goodwill.

And yeah, that’s, that’s the thing
but it’s not necessarily better,

it’s just people feel like it’s better.

So you and I were talking about this last
week, but there’s always the chance

that the DoJ, instead of forcing Chrome
to become its own entity, forces Chrome

or Google to sell Chrome to someone else.

But then we were kind of
debating, well, who would buy this?

It’s like 10, $15 billion.

Yeah, who buy this and not instantly
create another monopoly because Chrome

has 72% of the browser market.

A little bit more if you include
the Chromium based browsers

like Microsoft Edge and Arc,
which you’ve been using a bit.

That’s the thing.
The problem is Chromium.

Right.

Because Chromium is essentially
the underlying technology behind most

browsing on the Internet at this point,
apart from Safari and Firefox.

And the thing is, because Google makes so
much money, they invest in it, they make

the technology better, the web has gotten
faster and easier to navigate, et cetera.

If it becomes its own for profit entity,
the incentive is not going to be as big.

Because Google was like, well, if people
browse the web more, we display most

of the ads on the Internet.

Well, great, that makes sense.

Whereas if they have to make money
on their own, it’s likely

they will have more trackers loading
more things like that, et cetera.

And that’s going to make
your experience worse as a user.

And yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

In the short term, I think it
can be detrimental if they sell it.

Even though I’m all for
breaking up Google,

but I think there would be a period where
it would be worse before it gets better.

Is there any other way
that makes sense to break off part

of Google, to break up Google?

I mean, to me this is like it’s the
cleanest thing, it’s the easiest thing.

And I think it’s probably the area
of the business that the deal that GOJ

thinks they’re most likely to win because
of that 72% browser market share and all

the history of browser things with
Internet Explorer and Microsoft’s

antitrust case back in the day.
I think there is actually.

I think if they force them
to sell YouTube, that would be

another way to break it up.

Mostly because traditional search
is losing Steam anyway.

So you could argue that,
yeah, it’s winning for now.

But like display ads on websites,
if websites are not visited that much

anymore, not that big of a deal.

If people use search less
and move more to chatbots, it’s going

to naturally kind of like even out.

But video is the growing format here.

So it’s like, in my opinion, like the next
unicorn from Google is YouTube actually.

So if they forced YouTube
out, that would change things.

And it’s like Meta starts being able to
like display their ads on YouTube as well

as Google and they compete on that, etc.
Like that.

That could break up
Google in a different way.

That could be just as relevant, I think.

And so I guess the third potential outcome
here is that Google wins its Appeal or

the DOJ’s actions
get diluted significantly and they

get to keep on to Chrome but just
have to change a few settings somewhere.

Something like what happened
with Microsoft when they used to.

Yeah, something like this
when you boot it up and they kill

the deal with Apple or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that Apple deal, which actually
they have the deal with Firefox as well

to be the default search engine
on there and Safari.

And that’s quite a lot of money
that they’re paying for this.

But it is.

You don’t have to be a lawyer
to realise that’s probably

anti competitive what they’re.
That is.

But this is also the only way to monetize
a browser without killing the experience.

It’s very difficult otherwise.

And so that’s why it’s like the problem
is the browser market could collapse if

making deals with Google does not work.

Unless OpenAI sweeps in and starts
paying high prices to just compete

with Google directly or something like.

It seems like they really
want to take that market share.

So it’s like possibly, which is a.

Great transition to our next
story, which is the new browser wars.

Because this is actually heating up.

Like forget all the DOJ stuff,
forget Google selling Chrome, but OpenAI

is currently developing a browser
which it says it wants to use

to compete with Chrome internally.

They’re calling
this natural language Web or NL Web.

It’s still some way away from launching.

We don’t know what that means,
whether that’s months or years.

But they’ve been on a hiring spree.

They’ve recruited Ben Goodger
and Darren Fisher.

Darren was.

He worked on the original Chrome project.

He was one of the original developers.

And also over at arc,
which we talked about earlier,

it’s a browser you’ve switched to, but
they’ve stopped development now, right?

Yeah.

So I mean they basically
like they called the browser

company, their goal was to make.

To reinvent the browser, which they did.

A lot of people really like arc.

The problem is it became kind of
like a nerd browser with like lots

of advanced features and they’re kind of
like a venture backed company.

They need to make a unicorn
to make it worth it.

It’s not good enough
to make a $100 million company.

They want a billion dollars basically.

And as a result it’s like they actually
stopped the development of ARC

and started a new product
because it wasn’t broad reaching enough.

But yeah, I mean it’s
a really good browser.

It’s got a lot of momentum.

Their growth was insane
and they still stopped it.

And all the nerds are mad at this point
because their favourite browser

is not developed anymore.

And this really comes back
to money issue, right?

It’s because it’s notoriously difficult
to make money and that shows that

no one wants to pay for it.
Exactly.

Firefox, 80% of its revenue, 80% of
its revenue comes from Google paying them

to be the default search engine.

And that’s the reason
it continues to exist.

And probably something
Google’s doing strategically,

not just to get people to use google.

com for search, but to kind of,
you know, pretend that they’re not

a monopoly in the browser browser space.

And something similar for Safari, though
that’s slightly different with GitHub.

It’s not paid by Google,
but it’s just Apple wants the.

Apple sells you the privacy.

It’s part of their feature set.

That is their marketing basically.

So yeah.

So why does OpenAI want
to create its own browser?

Is this a data play as well?

I think it’s kind of like every kind of
like really big platform needs to control

some kind of operating system basically.

So, and that’s kind of like, you know,
like Google has Android for example,

and they had like Chrome os, but they’re
looking to phase that down for Android.

So Android really is their platform.

Apple has iOS, macOS, et
cetera, like all the, all the OS.

Microsoft has Windows.

They kind of felt their transition
to mobile with Windows Mobile.

But.

And then Facebook has been complaining for
decades that they never had an operating

system and that’s why they can’t grow
and that’s why they’ve invested so much

in the metaverse, for example.

Nobody cares about it anymore.

But the reason why Mark Zuckerberg was
like, I’m going to take my pile of money

and risk it all on VR is because of his
frustration with not owning an operating

system that essentially anchors you
in people’s lives so much more

than just having a product.

And so OpenAI they have this ambition.

They want to be the next Apple, they want
to be the next phase meta, et cetera.

And so they need an operating system.

And seeing the success of Chrome
and essentially the browser being how you

operate most things on your computer
for most people at this point,

apart from maybe creative tasks,
it’s kind of like the easiest way to do

that, because selling a computer
and making a computer or making a phone or

something like that,
it’s so much more difficult.

Whereas a browser is just a software play
that plugs into that, but you kind of

hijack the operating system
of the user and you get control.

So, yeah, it’s collecting data,
but it’s mostly anchoring yourself

in a way where you’re hard to remove.

And that’s why they want Google
to sell Chrome, because they’re hard to

remove now that everyone’s using Chrome.

And so, yeah, OpenAI is going just for
the same playbook at this point, I guess.

Is this also like a distribution play?

We saw Meta AI get to 500 million monthly

users in a very short space of time

because they have the Facebook apps,
Instagram apps, and they just stuck their

AI in there and ban 500 million people.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And you can see as well
the macOS app for ChatGPT, right,

is kind of like, also kind of like
becoming this distribution point as well.

You can start seeing your screen
now, you have a keyboard shortcut

to call it from any place, et cetera.

So yeah, it’s just like they want
most people to use their product because

that’s how they become the next Apple,
the next Google, the next whatever.

And so the browser is the smart play.

But the interesting thing is like you look
at how they’re tackling search, right?

They didn’t just copy Google, they made
something different, like search.

GPT is a fundamentally different
experience than Google,

but there’s still links, et cetera.

And so OpenAI, they’re not a company
that’s just going to copycat and do

the same thing, just slapping their thing
on it because they know nobody’s going

to switch if you do that.

Just why would I?

And so what’s going to be interesting
is what’s their take on the browser?

And knowing they’re an AI company,
my gut feeling is their browser is going

to open a lot less websites than Chrome’s
browser that relies on search results

with mixed organic and paid results.
Right?

So my gut feeling is if they released
a browser and it became popular, which

is not a given necessarily, but they’re
on a fast growth trajectory right now,

as I said, they overtook Bingo already.

Website traffic would tank further.

Basically, people will regret Google
actually, at this Point.

That’s a scary, scary
thought to ponder, right?

I mean, makes sense, right?

They’re a generative AI company,
they generate the content for you, they

don’t need the websites nearly as much.

What would they have to do?

Like what features would they
have to include or how good would

their browser need to be to get people
to switch away from this Chrome

which they’ve had installed for 10 years?

I mean, it depends who
you’re talking about, right?

If you’re talking about me, it just needs
to have like a nice colour and it’s fine,

I’ll just switch to it and that’s fine.

But think about the Chrome extension
library, for example, right?

Would you switch if
your favourite extension did not work?

Probably not, right?
Yeah, it’s harder.

Yeah, it would be quite difficult.

It means all the integrations
you have with Notion and the tools,

maybe a two factor authentication plugin.

That’s why I have, for example,
it helps me picture in picture

for videos and so on.

I don’t think I would
switch if it wasn’t available.

Which tells me that if they develop a
browser it will be developed on Chromium.

Which ties us back to our previous story,
because if they develop it on Chromium,

then extensions work and is the same
base technology and it’s open source.

So in principle they can take
whatever Chrome is today and fork it

in their own direction without
owing anything to Google, basically.

So yeah, I don’t think they can make
a mass market product that is not

developed on Chromium at this point.

It would be so much more.

Unless it’s something really far away
from what we consider to be a browser

at the moment.
Right.

It’s a different take then, but then.

But they need to integrate
with whatever you’re already using,

which it sounds like the extent
like migrating most extensions

and getting most people to use it.

It’s like it would be quite challenging.

What they could have is they
could have a porting kit, right?

They could make like essentially
a software that allows Chrome extension

developers to in one click make
their extension work on their browser and

have a different rendering technology.

But you also have to consider
most websites are built

for Chrome at this point.

Like when I build my website, I test it
for Chrome and if you have a different

rendering engine, if the tech behind
rendering the web page is different, it’s

quite likely websites could break, etc.

So either OpenAI doesn’t give a shit
for website rendering because they don’t

give you many websites
anyway, or they’re going

to have to Be quite close to Chromium.

And in that case you might
as well start from there.

I suppose it’s possible
that they can use their technology

to present what’s on a website,
the information in a different way.

Right?

The same way that, you know,
perplexity or tools like that will.

You’ll do a search and it will summarise,
it will almost create a new web page

about what that web page is in
a very like search way at the moment.

Basically search as default search.
Right?

It’s like, that’s so it’s like all
of these access points to AI, you know,

doing the search in the, in the browser,
using the app, using your voice, like,

and the way it works in filtering
information and presenting it to you

in a different, easier to understand,
concise way in the way you want.

I feel I don’t quite see it yet,
but there’s like some inflexion point

where this all just comes together.

And you know what I think?

I think they will.

So that next year is supposedly
the year of agents, where AI doesn’t just

reply to you, but does things for you.

And we do a lot of tedious things
on the Internet like booking plane

tickets, comparing prices, filling forms,
replying to emails, et cetera.

Like lots of tedious things that
could be done potentially by an agent

by the time they release this.

So my guess is that their browser
is going to be agent based and it’s going

to start doing the things that you don’t
want to do on the Internet rather

than you browsing and doing the things
and so that would get me to switch.

Imagine if I don’t have to like,
if it philtres all my emails for me

and pre draughts everything automatically
because it just can use the tools.

You know, I think if we, if.

We take it back to just basic actions
that end users, day to day,

end users do on the Internet.

So let’s say I’m buying a vacuum cleaner
for Christmas or something,

what’s the best vacuum cleaner to buy?

Or I want to go on vacation to Spain.

Like, you know, you know,
you have to perform a number of actions

to figure out where should I go,
what time of year should I go,

what flight should I get, what hotel
should I get, what should I do?

But if they’re able to perform all
of those actions and just present to you

in a very custom way based on what it
knows about you exactly,

all your previous searches, data, email,
etc, already just says here, Mark Webster,

here is your specific optimal itinerary
for your vacation or your Ideal vacuum

cleaner, because I know what type of house
you have and you have a dog and that

affects this and et cetera, et cetera.

But imagine it goes through your email
and it’s like, hey, the warranty for

your washing machine is about to expire.

Do you want me to extend this?
Yes.

No, that’s going to cost $99, let’s say.

And you just click yes.

And it just does all of it for you.

It contacts the supplier, it does it, it
reads your emails, it knows it’s going to

expire and then you just open a new tab.

It’s like, hey, by the way,
this is expiring.

Should I handle it for you?

And you say, yes, it does it.

There’s layers to that though as well,
because it presents you with a decision.

Yeah, but there’s another layer
where it makes a recommendation

about that decision
based on what it knows about you.

So it knows how much money you have in
the bank and how, how many warranties you

bought in the past and how risk averse
you are and all these types of things.

And it’s like,
based on your circumstances,

it’s probably not necessary or,
you know, this would protect you

from this, this, and this happened.

So in my opinion, the browser
is basically the ChatGPT app

that has a browser built in
where you can eventually browse websites.

But you try to get the AI
to do most things for you

and you interact in a much more
like natural language way with things.

And it just, you don’t have to think about
things, it just goes through everything

as context and just tells you
you should probably look into this,

you should probably think about that.

Based on what I know you
like, you probably should

cheque this out, et cetera.

And these would make me switch?

Actually, I would switch for that.
Yeah.

I mean, that’d be very interesting.

And we were just speculating here.

Obviously we don’t know what’s going
to happen, but it’s getting there.

Yeah, that is the kind
of the AI future that we were kind of

sold on in the beginning
of when it starts to get pretty scary.

It’s basically where it’s going.

I mean, we have clothes
that can use your computer already.

They just released a new kind
of API thing that allows it

to interact with more apps and so on.

The ChatGPT app can also
interact with coding apps

on your computer now and so on.

So really the next step is having it
do the thing rather than just

give you the answer in the chat
that you copy paste somewhere else.

And I think the Browser would be
an excellent vehicle for distributing

these to most people with a paid option
for it to do more things or whatever.

And that would be how they go about it.

So yeah, I think that’s how they get.

I think anything less people won’t switch.

Just to throw some more AI nihilism
I guess out there.

I was watching a podcast the weekend

by Y Combinator who do a lot of kind of

investments in startups and they run all
these kind of early stage growth

incubators, things like that and they’re
saying that there’s a huge opportunity

for this vertically integrated AI SaaS
product to replace

SaaS tools in specific markets.

So AI agents will do that, but that’s a
short to medium term thing.

In five, six years they reckon that most

experts, most things people are experts

on, there will be an AI,
one AI that has like a grand

software or whatever you would describe
it, that can do everything better than

most of these experts,
80, 80, 90% of the time.

So kind of like we’ve talked about
this kind of like scary AI future stuff

before, but really it kind of makes you
think like is everything we’re doing now

just going to be go away and three
or four years probably as a business?

Probably.
I mean, yes, probably.

But the thing is like, so that’s why you
need to do things that have value now and

you need to extract value quickly because
the landscape is changing so fast.

The focus of businesses
should be on basically surviving today,

like putting money in the bank
today, like making long term bets is

quite challenging I would say right now.

Unless, unless you have access to these
big companies and you know,

things like yeah, the challenge especially
for web publishers should be just do what

works today and put yourself in a position
to take advantage of the next

wave when that presents itself.

And speaking of the next wave, there’s
one small story I want to finish up with.

There’s a company called Pro Rata AI
who claims to have developed

a way to track which content,
which source content is being used by

different AI models when it gives output.
Right.

So if you go to Google and it’s AI
overviews, answer, present some

information, they claim to be able to
determine which sources, which original

pieces of content that came from.

So they’ve signed up a bunch
of major publishers, Time Magazine,

the Atlantic, Guardian,
Universal Music Group, Financial Times,

Sky News and more, in an attempt

to create what they called a movement.

But the CEO was being interviewed on cnbc,
was challenged, saying this sounds more

like a union demanding
fair prices for your labour.

And it’s a really interesting analogy.

It’s maybe something akin to how
the Spotify algorithm, not algorithm,

but the Spotify licencing agreements
work where when your content is streamed

you get a very small amount
of money each time that happens.

So they want to create a network where
when Google or anyone else uses content

that the original creator gets paid.

Is this realistic?

And what do you think the implications
of something like this might be?

I mean first of all their system needs to
be fucking amazing because if it’s not

like these platforms are going to,
they’re going to prove it doesn’t work

well and they’re going to dismiss it.

They’d be like look, this is not even
working properly, why would we use this?

And then end of story.
Right?

So it’s like I haven’t tested it.

But big caveat there.

Yeah, exactly.

Because that’s the easiest way to not pay
anything is to just say it doesn’t work.

Right.
And it’s not possible.

I’m very surprised that
an external company could do this.

When the companies that themselves
build the models and know what they

put inside aren’t able to do this,
it looks like a desperate attempt

by large companies to get paid for this.

But unless there is legal, unless
governments are pushing for this, I don’t

see this going anywhere, to be frank,
because nobody’s forcing these companies

to do anything about it at this point.

There is some cases, I know there is New
York Times against OpenAI, I know there

is perplexity being sued, et cetera.
It’s happening.

So it really depend
on how these things go.

But I think companies will not want
to give control of such an important part

of their company to a third party.

So I would imagine it might inspire them
to build a similar system eventually.

But I just can’t see this company
do well actually it’s really a union,

it’s really just a way to protest and
try to be a bit logical about it.

That’s how I see it.

How bad are LLMs right now
at just scraping everyone’s data

without consent, even if people
are specifically trying to block it?

I mean it depends who you are asking for.
Like basically what’s happening.

It even happened to Google, to Apple,
sorry, which Apple is like, you know,

they want to be ethically super clean,
et cetera, but they basically buy data

from third party providers.

So there’s like, there’s companies
that just scrape data and they just

sell it to these companies
and they’re like, they train the data.

The problem is it’s kind of
like Money laundering a little bit.

Because these scraping companies,
they don’t give a shit,

nobody knows about them.

And all they want is just
a good data set to charge for.

And then the Companies
that create LLMs, they need data.

They’re so hungry for data,
otherwise they can’t make a model that’s

competitive with everyone else, right?

And so it’s kind of like they basically
made a layer of companies that just

do all the grey hat stuff,
steal the data and sell it

to the companies that are clean.

And the companies that are clean,
they’re like, look, I just

bought the data from the third party.

It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.

It’s like, it’s just like
they didn’t let us know.

And just like the company just renames
itself and then sells the data again

to the same company later, basically.

And so that’s kind of like the game
they’re playing right now.

But it really depends.

There needs to be some very big fines
to come out of this

for these companies to change,
because otherwise it’s working, right?

But Perplexity, for example,
ignores your road txt completely.

It’s like they don’t care if you block
their bot, they will take your data.

And they even took paywall
data at some point.

Like you could read payroll articles
through Perplexity for a while actually.

And this concept of regulation or
kind of the wild.

There being a wild west industry
around scraping data is not new, right?

We’ve seen that with original Google.

There was a famous case where they were
not Google, but a third party company

which Google paid for data, was scraping
a lyrics website and then Google was

displaying lyrics as a featured snippet.

And so a company suspected this,
so they put out some fake lyrics.

The company then scraped
these fake lyrics.

Google bought those fake
lyrics, put them on its featured

snippet, and this got pointed
out to Google in no uncertain terms.

And they’re like, oh, it’s not our fault,
we bought this data fair and square.

Blame them.

So until that’s punished,
it’s like they will do it done.

By the time this happens though,
it’s already been done.

And the new normal is that
all these lyrics are available for free.

And there’s the same thing
happening with AI right now.

If one company, Perplexity
gets stopped, then a million other

or 50 other companies are coming
in and doing it anyway.

So you lose your advantage,
you lose all your competitive advantage

if you’re too careful here.

And that’s the thing, it’s like now
it’s like, first of all, we don’t

know how to remove data from an LLM.

Once it’s trained, it’s trained.

It’s like you cannot really touch that.

And the second thing is that we’re now
using LLMs to train LLMs, right?

So a lot of companies are running
out of Data to train LLMs,

so they essentially generate what
they call synthetic data to train LLMs.

But what can happen is it’s basically
an old model that generates data that

the other LLM just analyses, et cetera.

So it’s like if data was stolen
at one point, even if the new LLM

is not trained on stolen data,
the other LLM that knows about it,

that trains that model probably is.

And as a result, you cannot
get a distilled version

of whatever content was stolen.

So it’s like, I think it’s going to be
almost impossible and it’s going to be

distilled so much eventually as
the generations of model come out,

that even if they have a technology
that can find what content was stolen,

as it gets more and more distilled through
model training, it’s not going to work.

It’s going to fail at some point.

It’s a little bit like
detecting AI content.

Like it works 50% of the time,
which means you might as well

flip a coin and that’s the same result.

So it’s cool that they’re trying
to do that for publishers, but it

looks like a company made by old people
who don’t understand technology.

And probably when you scratch
a little bit under the surface,

it might not be that good actually.

But let’s see how it goes.

My last question then.

Does this mean that Ahrefs
were correct when they set up yep.

com as a with an idea to reward

creators in some way?

Because this is essentially
the same thing, just not

done through Search engine.
Right.

Well, I expect this company
is going to go just as well as yep.

com then, because nobody’s using it.

That’s the problem.

It’s like sharing,
like 10% of zero is still zero.

And before you consider even sharing,
build a company people want to use

because otherwise it changes nothing.

All right, so any final words of wisdom
on anything we’ve covered today?

No, I think that’s it.
I mean, it was cool, actually.

I want to know what people
think about that format.

It’s kind of like a more casual way
of talking about what’s happening.

We’re going a bit broader,
but I think it’s time to go broader.

We could talk about sneaky little tactics.

We’ve done that on many other episodes.

But I think if you want
to do well in today’s world,

you need to get that context.

Otherwise the decisions you’re going
to make for your business,

they’re not going to, they’re not
going to matter quite often.

So, yeah, let’s see.
Let us know what you think in.

The comments and we’ll be back
in two weeks for another episode.

So if you’re following along
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and we’ll see you in two weeks time.