Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wants Google to offer improved tools to block AI crawlers . Joining a discussion on this topic on the social media platform X (earlier Twitter), he said that Google’s chatbot Gemini is blocked within Cloudflare's system. He emphasised that significant progress against unregulated AI data scraping requires cooperation from major AI companies. The cybersecurity company recently introduced a "pay-per-crawl" system, which is designed to counter AI companies that scrape the open web without compensation. Prince believes that the very companies performing the crawling should support this initiative.
What Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said about blocking Gemini
In his X post, Prince wrote: “Gemini is blocked by default. We will get Google to provide ways to block Answer Box and AI Overview , without blocking classic search indexing, as well.”
Prince asserted that it is feasible to block Google's AI crawlers without affecting standard web indexing. He added that Cloudflare is working on a solution to simplify this separation for site owners. The rise of what is called the " Zero Click Internet " is seen as a potential threat to the balance established by traditional content indexing.
Later on, Prince joined another discussion on this topic on X to say: “Worst case we’ll pass a law somewhere that requires them to break out their crawlers and then announce all routes to their crawlers from there. And that wouldn’t be hard. But I’m hopeful it won’t need to come to that.”
Replying to Prince, one user wrote: “Yeah hopefully we don’t have to come to that and they’ll just respect and work with content creators on a shared spec.”
In the same thread, Prince replied: “I’m encouraged from conversations with them. But that very viable option we have many legislators in many jurisdictions lined up to pass if they don’t.”
What Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said about blocking Gemini
In his X post, Prince wrote: “Gemini is blocked by default. We will get Google to provide ways to block Answer Box and AI Overview , without blocking classic search indexing, as well.”
Prince asserted that it is feasible to block Google's AI crawlers without affecting standard web indexing. He added that Cloudflare is working on a solution to simplify this separation for site owners. The rise of what is called the " Zero Click Internet " is seen as a potential threat to the balance established by traditional content indexing.
Later on, Prince joined another discussion on this topic on X to say: “Worst case we’ll pass a law somewhere that requires them to break out their crawlers and then announce all routes to their crawlers from there. And that wouldn’t be hard. But I’m hopeful it won’t need to come to that.”
Replying to Prince, one user wrote: “Yeah hopefully we don’t have to come to that and they’ll just respect and work with content creators on a shared spec.”
In the same thread, Prince replied: “I’m encouraged from conversations with them. But that very viable option we have many legislators in many jurisdictions lined up to pass if they don’t.”
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