Stop relying on Google. Discover the benefits of exploring other search engines and expanding your online horizons.

Back in 2014, I wrote a blog post that caused quite a stir. Titled "Why You Should Forget Facebook," it was my way of venting my frustration with the platform's betrayal of creators and marketers who had put in years of hard work to build a following. Little did I know that this post would go on to receive 400,000 views, over 1,000 comments, and hold the top spot on LinkedIn's global content for a whole week.

At the time, Facebook had just gone public and made some major changes that drastically reduced organic reach for businesses and individuals. It was a crushing blow to thousands of startups and media companies that had come to rely on the platform for their traffic and visibility. I was furious then, and I'm even more furious now.

What triggered this anger once again, over a decade later, was Google's recent announcement at their 2026 conference. They proudly unveiled their biggest change to search in 25 years, claiming that it would make our lives easier by using their powerful AI tools to provide search results across different modalities like text, images, and videos. But the reality is far from what they make it out to be.

This is just another way for them to make more money and steal content from creators under the guise of innovation and progress. Google, a trillion-dollar platform, is nothing but a bullying thug. And what they're doing to the open web with the help of AI is far worse than what Facebook did all those years ago.

The upcoming change will essentially reduce website traffic from search to zero, while Google profits off of the content they've taken without our permission. This is just the latest version of what I call "The Great Steal," and it's the final nail in the coffin for SEO and the SEO industry. But let's not forget that this has been happening for years.

After Facebook's algorithm change, other large platforms followed suit and minimized organic traffic to maximize their own revenue. And now, with Google's new AI-powered search, the situation is only getting worse for creators. As someone who has been in the industry for over fifteen years, I've seen firsthand how the deal between creators and Google has changed.

It used to be simple - creators would create, Google would index, and we would receive traffic and earn a living. But now, Google is taking our content and using it to train their AI without giving any credit or compensation to the creators. And they're doing it on an industrial scale.

Let's dive deeper into what this "Great Steal" looks like. Google has been crawling the web for over two decades, collecting and using content from millions of creators without their permission. This content is then used to train their AI, which is now powerful enough to give users all the information they need without ever having to click on the original source - the creator's website.

This is what we call "The Great Steal Mk 2." This isn't a new pattern - we've seen it before with Facebook. After going public in 2012, they drastically reduced organic reach for pages, essentially forcing businesses to pay for advertising if they wanted to reach their audience. And now, Google is doing the same thing, but with a different approach.

Instead of limiting reach, they're providing answers directly in their search results, making it even less likely for users to click on external links. But what if we stopped feeding the machine? Every piece of content we publish that can be crawled by Google is just adding more fuel to their AI.

It's training data that they're using to replace us and make money off of our hard work. Even on YouTube, which is owned by Google, creators are at risk of having their content analyzed and summarized without ever getting a single viewer to their channel. The question that nobody wants to ask is, "What if we stopped feeding the machine?" Maybe it's time for creators to take a stand and fight back against this blatant theft of our content.

The creator rebellion is already underway, with more and more publishers blocking AI crawlers to protect their work. It's time for us to demand fair treatment and recognition for our contributions to the open web. Back in 2014, I wrote a passionate post titled "Why You Should Forget Facebook" and shared it on LinkedIn.

I never could have imagined the response it would receive - a whopping 400,000 views and over 1,000 comments. It even spent a week as the top content on LinkedIn worldwide. The reason behind this post was simple: Facebook had betrayed all of us creators and marketers who had put in years of hard work to build our presence on their platform.

It seemed as though they had gone public and completely changed the rules without our knowledge, killing organic reach and shifting the goalposts right under our noses. The impact of this betrayal was felt by thousands of startups and media companies that relied on Facebook for their traffic, web visibility, and overall business. It was a "Great Steal" that left many of us feeling furious and betrayed.

And now, over a decade later, that same anger has resurfaced due to Google's recent announcement at their annual 2026 conference. In their own words, they stated: "This new search box puts our most powerful AI tools right at your fingertips, and you can ask across modalities with text, images, files, videos and search reasons across them all." On the surface, this may seem like a positive update, but the reality is far from it. The truth is, this is just another money-grabbing tactic disguised as a gift to humanity.

Google, a trillion-dollar platform, is nothing more than a bullying thug. And what they have done to the free and open web, with the help of artificial intelligence, makes Facebook's betrayal seem like a minor inconvenience. They are stealing our content and monetizing it without our permission, all while presenting it as a friendly embrace.

The implications of this are huge. As Google continues to dominate the search engine market, website traffic from search is slowly but surely heading towards zero. And sadly, this is just the latest chapter in what can only be described as "The Great Steal Mk 2." It's the final nail in the coffin for SEO and the SEO industry, but this has been happening for years.

After Facebook's algorithm change, other major platforms followed suit in order to maximize revenue, minimizing organic traffic in the process. But what Google is doing now is on a whole other level. As one person so accurately put it: "Google did not just change the algorithm.

Google took your life's work, fed it to a machine without your permission, and is now using that machine to replace you and make money from you." These words hit home for me, as I have been building my website, jeffbullas.com, for over fifteen years. I remember waking up at four-thirty in the morning, five days a week, for five years straight, writing about digital marketing, social media, and the future of content. It was a labor of love, and it paid off.

I grew my readership to over thirty-three million, with an impressive Domain Authority above eighty, and an email list with a forty-percent-plus open rate. But then, everything changed. Not because my content got worse, or because my audience lost interest.

No, it was because Google decided they no longer needed to send my readers to my website. They could answer their questions themselves, using my content and the content of millions of other creators like me to build an AI that had no obligation to acknowledge the source. It was a complete betrayal of the deal we had made - I create, Google indexes, Google sends traffic, I earn a living.

But now, Google gets to sell advertising against that traffic, while I am left with nothing. The scale of this "Great Steal" is staggering. For over two decades, Google has been crawling the public internet, collecting every piece of information they can get their hands on, without ever asking for permission or offering compensation.

And now, they are using this content to train their AI and answer user's questions without ever directing them to the original source. Their AI Overview answers are taking over the top search results, reducing click-through rates and leaving creators like myself with little to no traffic. But this is not a new pattern, it's something we've seen before.

Just like how Facebook went public in 2012 and drastically reduced organic reach, Google is now following the same playbook. And the sad truth is, they are not the only ones. The companies that have benefited the most from the open web are now actively dismantling it for their own gain.

The question that no one wants to ask is, "What if we stopped feeding the machine?" Every piece of content we publish that Google can crawl is just more training data for their AI. Every YouTube video we create is analyzed, summarized, and served through their AI products, without ever directing viewers to our channels. It's time for us to take a stand and fight back against this "Great Steal." The creator rebellion is already underway, with more and more top publishers blocking AI crawlers.

It's time for us to demand fair compensation for our hard work and contributions to the internet. The open web needs to be protected, and it starts with us.