Death of the Search Monopoly: UK Will Force Google to Share Traffic with AI Agents

The monopoly of classic search engines (SEO) has fundamentally cracked. On September 23, 2026, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published a package of proposals requiring Google to implement choice screens for Android and Chrome users.

The regulator demands that consumers be given the option to switch from classic Google search to alternative services, including intelligent AI assistants (like ChatGPT and Perplexity). For the B2B macroeconomy, this signifies a forced redistribution of the multi-billion dollar advertising pie. The era of contextual advertising in search results is fading into the past, giving way to generative answers. The CMA’s requirements for attribution and transparency will force AI platforms to build new economic relationships with media publishers, radically changing the unit economics of traffic monetization.

Source: UK CMA