AI and the Collapse of the www

Working Paper 35344

DOI 10.3386/w35344

Issue Date June 2026

This paper studies market design for generative AI intermediation. AI answer systems can improve user experience while diverting visits that finance publisher content and generate source-level quality signals. I show that an AI platform that underinternalizes future content reproduction retains too little referral traffic and can make costly open-web information subcritical, even with truthful content, accurate answers, and rational users. The mechanism can be self-reinforcing: less source-level measurement weakens conventional search, inducing further AI reliance. Sustainable repair requires replacing displaced revenue and deleted measurement through visitor-replacement royalties, audited provenance, human-information audits, and keystone-topic compensation.