I’ve always loved writing, and took to this form – the “thinking out loud” version of blogging – more than 20 years ago. I started Searchblog after I sold my first book, which focused on the impact of search on business and culture. I decided I’d chronicle my reporting and build my voice by posting as often as I could, and the experience proved to be a watershed moment in my career. I built an audience that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, noticed scores of others doing the same, then launched a new company (Federated Media) based on insights from the experience.
The early 2000s marked the apex of what is now called “the open web,” and today two stories may as well be considered obituaries for the era. The first, by Kate Conger at the NYT, lays out the mechanism for the open web’s demise: “Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed.” The second brings news of a $1.5 billion settlement in a massive copyright infringement lawsuit targeting the AI industry. As an author, I’m a party to that suit – and at some point in the next year, a check from Anthropic will wend its way through the mail to me. A coda, of sorts, for an era already passed.
As Conger details in her piece, Google search once drove most of the internet’s traffic. It created a positive feedback loop between high quality content, often found on early blogs, and burgeoning consumer usage of search engines. When this site launched, there were relatively few blogs, and because we reliably linked to quality sites, Google’s search index rewarded us with high “pagerank” scores, which meant our posts ranked at the top of many high-traffic queries. If you were looking for coverage of business, you’d likely be routed to Business Insider. Internet culture? Google directed you to Boing Boing. And news about Google itself? Well, Google itself would often direct you to Searchblog.
Hell, for a minute there, my site was the first link that appeared after typing “John” into Google. That was heady, though I certainly knew it couldn’t last.
The rise of AI has only formalized what has been a steady decline in the open web. Federated Media’s revenues peaked in 2012, and we sold it to a larger media company two years later. The rise of social media, and then apps, made it abundantly clear that the world was headed toward a landscape of walled gardens and siloed data. Yes, there’s still Wikipedia and Substack, but these are exceptions proving the rule: the open web didn’t usher in a more perfect world of “small pieces loosely joined.” Instead, its bones fertilize the soil for whatever strange crop AI will reap.
So I’m feeling a bit wistful as I consider a check from Anthropic that I doubt I’ll cash. I’ve no idea how they’ll determine payouts, but suffice to say the number won’t prove life-changing. Instead, I think I’ll frame and hang it right next to my first editions of Wired and The Industry Standard. An artifact testifying to that brief and glorious moment when the web was young, free, and unencumbered.
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