**Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince Calls for Unbundling Google’s Search and AI Crawlers**
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, is urging UK regulators to separate Google’s search engine and its burgeoning AI crawler. Prince, speaking on the issue, highlighted concerns that Google’s dominant position in search could extend into the artificial intelligence landscape, potentially stifling competition and innovation.
His argument centers on the idea that Google’s extensive access to web content through its search crawler gives it an unfair advantage in training its AI models. By bundling these functions, Google could leverage its existing market power to dictate terms in the emerging AI sector. Prince’s push comes amidst growing global scrutiny of major tech companies’ market power and practices. Unbundling, he suggests, could create a more level playing field for AI development, allowing other companies to access web data for training their own models without being reliant on or disadvantaged by Google’s integrated operations.