People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel calls Google a 'bad actor' over AI crawling practices
A fierce debate over the future of online publishing has reignited after a top U.S. media executive accused Google of unfairly exploiting publishers’ content for AI.
- Sep 15, 2025,
- Updated Sep 15, 2025 12:13 PM IST
Neil Vogel, CEO of People Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith), has accused Google of misusing publisher content to power its AI products without fair compensation. Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, Vogel argued that Google’s reliance on a single crawler to both index websites for search and extract data for AI makes the company an “intentional bad actor.”
“Google has one crawler, which means they use the same crawler for their search, where they still send us traffic, as they do for their AI products, where they steal our content,” Vogel said.
Vogel highlighted how Google’s dominance in distributing web traffic has waned for his company. Three years ago, Google Search drove around 65 percent of traffic, but that figure has now slipped to the high 20s. He added that in earlier years, Google’s share was as high as 90 percent.
“I’m not complaining. We’ve grown our audience. We’ve grown our revenue,” Vogel said. “We’re doing great. What is not right about this is: You cannot take our content to compete with us.”
Vogel explained that publishers need leverage in the AI era. People Inc. has partnered with Cloudflare to block AI crawlers that do not pay, forcing AI companies to negotiate content deals. He revealed the publisher has already signed an agreement with OpenAI, which he described as a “good actor.”
While he declined to name names, Vogel noted that several “large LLM providers” had initiated discussions after his company began blocking their crawlers, though no contracts have been finalised yet.
The major challenge, Vogel said, is Google’s crawler cannot be blocked without also cutting off the vital traffic from Google Search. “They know this, and they’re not splitting their crawler. So they are an intentional bad actor here,” he declared.
Janice Min, CEO of Ankler Media, backed Vogel’s criticism, branding Big Tech companies like Google and Meta as “content kleptomaniacs.” Her company, she said, blocks AI crawlers outright.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, also on the panel, said publishers should not rely solely on copyright law to fight AI scraping. He warned that derivative works often fall under fair use protections and predicted that Google would eventually be forced to pay content creators for AI training.
Prince also added: “Everything that’s wrong with the world today is, at some level, Google’s fault,” criticising the way Google had trained publishers to prioritise traffic over content quality.
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Neil Vogel, CEO of People Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith), has accused Google of misusing publisher content to power its AI products without fair compensation. Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, Vogel argued that Google’s reliance on a single crawler to both index websites for search and extract data for AI makes the company an “intentional bad actor.”
“Google has one crawler, which means they use the same crawler for their search, where they still send us traffic, as they do for their AI products, where they steal our content,” Vogel said.
Vogel highlighted how Google’s dominance in distributing web traffic has waned for his company. Three years ago, Google Search drove around 65 percent of traffic, but that figure has now slipped to the high 20s. He added that in earlier years, Google’s share was as high as 90 percent.
“I’m not complaining. We’ve grown our audience. We’ve grown our revenue,” Vogel said. “We’re doing great. What is not right about this is: You cannot take our content to compete with us.”
Vogel explained that publishers need leverage in the AI era. People Inc. has partnered with Cloudflare to block AI crawlers that do not pay, forcing AI companies to negotiate content deals. He revealed the publisher has already signed an agreement with OpenAI, which he described as a “good actor.”
While he declined to name names, Vogel noted that several “large LLM providers” had initiated discussions after his company began blocking their crawlers, though no contracts have been finalised yet.
The major challenge, Vogel said, is Google’s crawler cannot be blocked without also cutting off the vital traffic from Google Search. “They know this, and they’re not splitting their crawler. So they are an intentional bad actor here,” he declared.
Janice Min, CEO of Ankler Media, backed Vogel’s criticism, branding Big Tech companies like Google and Meta as “content kleptomaniacs.” Her company, she said, blocks AI crawlers outright.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, also on the panel, said publishers should not rely solely on copyright law to fight AI scraping. He warned that derivative works often fall under fair use protections and predicted that Google would eventually be forced to pay content creators for AI training.
Prince also added: “Everything that’s wrong with the world today is, at some level, Google’s fault,” criticising the way Google had trained publishers to prioritise traffic over content quality.
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