Apple encountered website blocking challenges when launching its AI features and needs to negotiate licensing agreements with major sites. Google, leveraging its market influence, is able to pressure publishers to allow AI access to content, whereas Apple faces more website blocks on its AI crawler, Applebot-Extended. 7% of websites have chosen to block this crawler, with data showing that 294 major websites have restricted access. OpenAI also faces similar challenges, with a higher blocking rate for its crawler. Google has strengthened its market position by combining AI summaries with traditional web scraping.
