As anyone who runs a website will know. In order to keep the “lights on” you have to have some sort of revenue model. Which usually relates to web search and any revenue you can generate when that person visits your site.
While this model has been a hit for many over the past decade, we’ve noticed a concerning drop in both traffic and revenue on several websites, including our own. Initially, we thought this trend was due to people returning to work after the pandemic, but now we’re starting to suspect something more nefarious.
In a recent article on Techspot Cloudflare CEO, Matthew Prince warned that AI and zero click searches are killing the traditional website business model. The main thrust of the article suggesting, that because people are using AI to get answers to their queries. There is no need for anyone to visit a website.
Something that was all but confirmed at Google’s I/O 2025 keynote speech. So while AI is already answering search queries, which are then placed at the top of the Google results page. In order to ensure you don’t leave Google Search. Gemini AI is going to now ask you conversational questions to fine tune its responses.
This is going to mean that content creators will no longer receive the same levels of traffic, which in turn will reduce their ad revenue. So they will not be creating new content. Something which is already a worrying trend, as according to Reboot online, the global numbers of websites have dropped by 37%, with Forbes saying that 83% of websites are currently inactive.
Then because AI scrapes the internet for its answers. If we stop creating content, where is AI going to get its answers from? Sure services like Googles Gemini AI can fall back on scraping YouTube, social media, emails and texts. But there is a danger that in the future, the answers we start to get will be either wrong, terribly biased or simply made up nonsense.
Then you have to take into consideration that the drive to AI is all related to money. Be it stock value, advertising revenue, or simply large tech firms telling you what to think or buy. So in my opinion, the removal of knowledge and ideas from the internet is probably by design rather than an unintentional consequence of technological advancement.
Returning to the question is AI killing the Internet? Well that’s going to depend on your perspective. If you believe as I do, that the Internet was intended to be used as a research tool for the betterment of humanity. Then yes the internet is most definitely dying. However, if you feel that the internet has transcended its original purpose and is now a tool for commerce. Then AI will probably be the internets next evolutionary step.
Synology BeeStation Plus release
The strange thing about the Synology BeeStation, is that the more we have been using it the more we like it. However, as the 4TB version is a little under powered, and it lacks the ability to be a media server, it was difficult to recommend over a full NAS.
But as we just managed to get hold of the new Synology BeeStation plus. Which having been upgraded to 8TB, uses a faster Intel processor, and has a lot more RAM. Meaning it now includes a built in Plex server. So it looks like this new BeeStation may offer everything that a typical home user might want to use, while still being super easy to setup.
So if you’re thinking of getting one, check out our series of videos on setting up a BeeStation. You should also shop around. As we found that the Synology store was the cheapest place to buy a BeeStation, and saved us roughly £64.00 when compared to the price on Amazon.
This month’s video releases.
This month we have a lot of content for Apple Macintosh users. So at the beginning of the month we will be releasing our latest video, where we look at turning a Synology BeeStation into a Time Machine backup. We then intend to release a number of complementary videos that look at how you use Time Machine to do a full system restore of your computer.
Then at the end of the month, we will hopefully post our next video on setting up a Synology NAS. Which for this video will finally look at making our NAS accessible from the internet. Then if you are a site member. We will be releasing a number of short videos, including a sneak peek at a new series where we look at specific features in Microsoft Office.
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