People Inc. CEO accuses Google of abusing its market power with web crawling

People Inc.'s accusation that Google is abusing its market power by using the same crawler for both search and AI marks a significant development in the ongoing debate about web crawling and content protection. This accusation has significant implications for website owners, as it highlights the potential risks of allowing Google's crawler to access their content. If Google is using the same crawler for both search and AI, it could mean that website owners' content is being used to train AI models without their explicit consent. This could lead to a loss of control over how their content is used and potentially even intellectual property issues. In light of this accusation, website owners should take steps to protect their content. Firstly, they should review their robots.txt files to ensure they are not inadvertently allowing Google's crawler to access sensitive areas of their site. Secondly, they should consider implementing specific directives in their llms.txt files to control how their content is used by AI models. Lastly, website owners should monitor their website's traffic and bot activity closely to detect any potential abuse of their content by Google's crawler or other AI-powered bots.