Bloomberg Markets editor Joe Weisenthal sparked industry discussion today when he declared that traditional web browsing "feels like a personal failure" compared to using AI chatbots, raising existential questions about the future role of websites in an era where artificial intelligence increasingly mediates how people access information.

Weisenthal, who co-hosts Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast, shared his perspective through a newsletter examining whether websites need to exist when AI platforms like Perplexity can deliver content more efficiently. The commentary arrives amid mounting evidence that AI-powered search features fundamentally reshape how audiences discover and consume digital content.

"I swear, I swear, this is not another piece about my personal forays into vibecoding," Weisenthal wrote. "Okay, maybe it is a little bit. But not really."

His argument centers on a thought experiment about Perplexity, the AI search platform he discussed with CEO Dmitry Shevelenko last year. According to Weisenthal, Perplexity functions as "a kind of hybrid of LLM and search engine" that remains "tethered to the real world" by producing text alongside links to reporting from reputable news outlets when users ask about current events.

The commentary poses a scenario where Perplexity becomes people's primary destination for morning news consumption. "Let's just imagine that people regularly start making Perplexity their first destination each morning to catch up on the news," Weisenthal wrote. "And let's just imagine, for the sake of a thought experiment, that the traditional publishers come out fine in this relationship."

Under this hypothetical arrangement, major publications including The New York Times, CNN, and Al-Jazeera receive adequate compensation for their reporting being summarized and displayed on Perplexity. The platform achieved a $9 billion valuation in December 2024 and processes over 20 million daily queries, demonstrating substantial adoption of conversational search technology.

Yet even with publishers compensated, Weisenthal questioned the continued need for websites themselves. "Now my question is: in this future, why do websites still exist?" he asked. "If more and more people start consuming the NYT's content through a chatbot, why continue to invest in maintaining a well-functioning website called NYTimes.com?"

The observation acknowledges historical context. "I suppose that to some extent, this is a question that precedes the existence of chatbots," Weisenthal noted. "There was almost certainly a time, when a major priority for the NYT was to have a well-functioning, elegant website. And while there are people still paid to work on it, this is probably not their top priority right now."

Technology budgets that once focused on web development now target Instagram Reels and other platform-specific content strategies, according to Weisenthal's analysis.

The practical frustrations driving this perspective emerged from his recent experience with website management. "Anyway, I was thinking about this again, because in my vibecoding foray, easily the most annoying parts were when I had to leave the terminal interface and do something on the web," Weisenthal explained.

Tasks requiring traditional web interaction proved particularly frustrating. He cited redirecting domain names through GoDaddy's interface as an example. "I found GoDaddy's (where I've been registering various domain names for years) interface to be borderline unusable," Weisenthal wrote.

A specific modification illustrated the friction. "As I mentioned in the piece I wrote Tuesday, one of the first things I did was make it so that I could update my website directly from Claude Code, rather than having to update the files via the Cloudflare back end," he stated. "This is obviously a very small thing, but the point is that every time I had to operate in the browser, it felt deflating. Typing in URLs, clicking buttons, checking boxes, pulling down dropdowns, entering in fields. No thank you."

The critique extends beyond personal preference to broader questions about web design optimization. "But I'm genuinely curious what happens to the visual web that's designed for humans," Weisenthal wrote. Work currently enables AI agents to navigate websites and click elements "as a human does," with training involving "ingesting numerous sessions of people moving a mouse on the screen and so forth, until they can mimic that process."

This creates a paradox. "So that's all well and good, but it still gets to this issue that we currently have much of the internet presented in the form of web pages which are designed to be logical and pleasing to the human eye," according to Weisenthal. "We still do so much on the web."

The contrast between terminal interfaces and visual websites highlights efficiency differences. "But now every time I have to use the web, it kind of feels like a personal failure," Weisenthal stated. "It feels inefficient. And if the web is increasingly going to be navigated by bots, working on a human user's behalf, then why even bother optimizing for visuality at all?"

The commentary concludes without definitive predictions. "I don't know where any of this is going, but my guess is that pretty big structural changes are in store for what people think of as the internet," Weisenthal wrote.

His observations align with significant shifts documented across the digital advertising ecosystem. Google Network advertising revenues declined 1% year-over-year to $7.4 billion during second quarter 2025, marking concerning trends for publishers as AI features increasingly answer user queries without directing traffic to external websites.

Analysis from Ahrefs revealed that AI Overviews reduce organic clicks by 34.5% when present in search results. News publishers lost half their Google search traffic between 2023 and 2025, with Google Web Search traffic declining from 51% to 27% while Discover feed climbed to 68%.

The transformation extends beyond Google's ecosystem. Perplexity launched its Comet browser on July 9, 2025, integrating the company's AI search engine as the default search provider. The browser includes an AI assistant capable of summarizing emails, managing tabs, and navigating pages autonomously.

Google began testing AI Mode access directly from search results pages on mobile devices globally December 1, enabling users to transition from AI Overviews into conversational AI Mode without navigating to separate interfaces. The feature reached over 75 million daily active users following global rollout across 40 languages.

Publisher traffic patterns shifted dramatically throughout 2025. Research published by NP Digital revealed that 24.3% of marketers receive consistent referral traffic from AI tools while 39.3% report occasional traffic, demonstrating widespread integration between AI platforms and traditional web properties.

ChatGPT referral traffic experienced a dramatic 52% decrease starting July 21 as OpenAI adjusted citation weighting in its retrieval-augmented generation system to prioritize high-utility sources like Reddit and Wikipedia over branded content. Research analyzing over one billion ChatGPT citations found Reddit citations increased 87% while Wikipedia citations rose 62% during the same period.

The technical evolution supporting these shifts continues accelerating. Amazon launched its Ads Agent for automated campaign management on November 11, 2025, enabling advertisers to describe campaign objectives through natural language inputs rather than manual platform configuration.

Google deployed Gemini 3 in search on December 18, 2025, enabling dynamic interface generation and real-time simulations for complex queries. The integration represented the first time a frontier model with extensive coding and reasoning capabilities powered search results at scale from launch day.

The advertising implications extend beyond traffic distribution to fundamental business model questions. Google's December 2025 core update triggered severe ranking volatility, with some publishers reporting 70-85% declines in daily visitor counts. The timing proved particularly harsh as seasonal advertising rates typically peak during December.

OpenAI's approach to ChatGPT monetization took clearer shape with reports that the company actively develops advertising formats. The AI models could prioritize sponsored content to ensure it appears in ChatGPT responses, with mockups showing sponsored information in sidebars alongside main response windows.

Content consumption patterns increasingly favor AI-mediated discovery over direct website visits. Google Discover feeds users AI and YouTube while publishers watch traffic vanish. In the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, 51% of the feed now consists of AI Summaries, representing fundamental reallocation of feed real estate away from traditional publisher links.

The transformation compounds existing pressures facing digital publishers. Dark traffic exposes blind spots in digital advertising as nearly 1 billion users become invisible through brutal adblockers that block analytics tools, cookie consent banners, and all monetization attempts.

Some publishers adapted through direct partnerships with AI platforms. Perplexity announced Comet Plus with major news publishers on October 3, 2025, introducing a revenue-sharing model where publishers receive compensation when their content appears in AI responses to Perplexity users.

The subscription becomes available for $5 monthly, positioning competitively against individual news subscriptions typically costing $10-30 monthly. Subscribers gain access to multiple premium publications for a single fee, potentially appealing to readers who consume content from various sources but resist maintaining multiple subscriptions.

Research indicates AI search visitors demonstrate 4.4 times higher conversion value compared to traditional organic search traffic, though overall traffic volumes decline as users receive answers directly from AI-generated summaries. This performance disparity stems from AI systems providing comprehensive information during research phases, meaning users arrive at destinations already equipped with relevant knowledge.

The philosophical questions Weisenthal raises extend beyond technical implementation to existential considerations about digital publishing's role. If AI platforms adequately compensate publishers for content usage while users prefer consuming information through conversational interfaces, the continued investment in traditional website development and maintenance becomes difficult to justify from pure efficiency standpoints.

Web browsers remain dominant software for accessing internet content and services. Tasks like purchasing car insurance still require functional websites. Yet the gap between terminal efficiency and web interaction frustration highlights tensions that may reshape digital infrastructure fundamentally.

Training data for future AI systems presents additional complexity. Without traditional websites, AI models lose primary sources for training and information retrieval. The symbiotic relationship between content creation and AI capabilities requires sustainable models supporting both ecosystems.

Industry observers recognize these dynamics create unprecedented challenges for content creators and publishers. Traditional search engine optimization strategies designed for Google's algorithm face difficulties adapting to multiple AI platforms with different citation practices and content selection criteria.

The marketing community confronts fundamental questions about whether existing infrastructure can accommodate autonomous AI systems or whether new protocols become necessary. The debate extends beyond technical specifications to strategic considerations about transparency, trust, and control in automated information discovery.

Current trends suggest continuing fragmentation rather than convergence around single dominant platforms. ChatGPT focuses on conversational versatility and broad consumer adoption, Gemini leverages Google's infrastructure and enterprise relationships, Perplexity targets real-time search and information retrieval, while Claude emphasizes safety and accuracy in AI-generated responses.

These differentiated approaches create multiple viable paths to market share rather than winner-take-all dynamics. Each platform pursues distinct monetization strategies, from advertising integration to premium subscription tiers offering unlimited access to advanced AI models.

Google's advertising revenue shift reached 90% toward owned properties as Network advertising faces decline, according to industry analysis following Alphabet's July 23, 2025 earnings announcement. AI Mode operates entirely within Google's interface, providing comprehensive conversational search experiences that eliminate the need for external website visits.

The transition Weisenthal describes represents more than personal preference or temporary inconvenience. His commentary captures broader industry transformation where terminal interfaces and AI agents increasingly replace visual web browsing as the primary method for information access and task completion.

Whether websites retain relevance depends partly on use cases requiring human-centric visual interfaces versus those where AI mediation provides superior experiences. The current trajectory suggests hybrid approaches where some functions migrate entirely to conversational interfaces while others maintain traditional web implementations.

Publishers navigating this transformation face challenges balancing optimization for both traditional search and AI retrieval, requiring different content structures and potentially competing strategic frameworks. The compensation models Perplexity and others propose offer potential solutions to declining revenues while maintaining AI-powered search experiences that users increasingly prefer.

Weisenthal's provocative question about website necessity crystallizes tensions throughout digital publishing. If AI platforms deliver content more efficiently while adequately compensating creators, the logic supporting continued website investment weakens considerably. The answers emerging over coming months will shape digital information access for years ahead.

PPC Land Newsletter

Subscribe PPC Land newsletter ✉️ for similar stories like this one

Subscribe

Timeline

Summary

Who: Bloomberg Markets editor Joe Weisenthal, who co-hosts the Odd Lots podcast, raised questions about website necessity in his newsletter. His commentary affects publishers, content creators, and digital advertisers navigating the transition from traditional web interfaces to AI-mediated information access.

What: Weisenthal argued that traditional web browsing "feels like a personal failure" compared to using AI chatbots and terminal interfaces, questioning why publishers should continue investing in website development when AI platforms like Perplexity can deliver content more efficiently. His thought experiment imagines a future where publishers receive adequate compensation for content summarized by AI, yet websites themselves become unnecessary.

When: The commentary was published today, January 15, 2026, amid mounting evidence of AI-powered search features fundamentally reshaping audience behavior. The timing coincides with dramatic publisher traffic declines, including Google Web Search traffic to news publishers dropping from 51% to 27% between 2023 and 2025.

Where: The discussion centers on the entire digital publishing ecosystem, with particular focus on major platforms including Google, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and traditional publishers like The New York Times. Traffic shifts affect websites globally as AI-powered interfaces capture increasing user attention across desktop and mobile devices.

Why: Weisenthal's frustration with web interface inefficiency compared to terminal-based AI interactions sparked existential questions about digital infrastructure. The broader context includes Google Network advertising revenue declining 1% to $7.4 billion in Q2 2025, AI Overviews reducing organic clicks by 34.5%, and publishers facing 70-85% traffic declines during algorithmic updates while AI platforms demonstrate 4.4 times higher conversion value for visitors who do arrive at websites.

Share this article
The link has been copied!