Google is not kidding round about value slicing, even slashing its FT subscription

Google is ending its enterprise subscription to the Monetary Occasions, and it’s not the one enterprise media subscription on the chopping block, sources say. The cuts replicate broader cost-reduction efforts on the search large, at the same time as the corporate stories robust monetary efficiency.

Google has been implementing value reductions throughout 2025, together with eliminating 35% of managers who oversee groups of three folks or fewer, and providing voluntary exit packages throughout a number of divisions since January. Finance chief Anat Ashkenazi signaled late final 12 months that the corporate would proceed to push value cuts “a bit additional,” a mandate that seems unchanged regardless of Alphabet reporting robust Q2 2025 outcomes with $96.4 billion in income.

These cuts might save Google mere 1000’s; in addition they come as Google faces more and more strained relationships with information publishers. August knowledge from the commerce affiliation Digital Content material Subsequent confirmed median referral site visitors from Google Search to publishers fell 10% between Could and June of this 12 months, with non-news manufacturers experiencing 14% drops.

Main shops, together with CNN, Enterprise Insider, and HuffPost have reportedly seen even sharper site visitors declines (of 30%, 40%, and 40%, respectively), in line with knowledge from SimilarWeb.

Publishers attribute these declines largely to Google’s AI Overviews function, which has diminished click-throughs to exterior web sites from 56% to 69% since its launch, in line with Pew Analysis. This spring, Pew analyzed knowledge from 900 U.S. adults, six in ten of whom carried out no less than one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI-generated abstract.

Some would possibly even see Google canceling its FT subscription as akin to a plagiarist refusing to purchase the textbook they’re copying from.

At a Fortune occasion earlier this month, the CEO of the biggest digital and print writer within the U.S. — Neil Vogel of Individuals Inc. — didn’t maintain his punches, calling Google a “dangerous actor” and accusing it of utilizing the identical bot to crawl web sites for its search engine because it does to help its AI options.

In a separate, scathing op-ed this summer time, Digital Content material Subsequent CEO Jason Kint wrote that Google’s AI overviews are making a “zero-click” atmosphere the place “all site visitors useless ends at Google.”

Google didn’t reply to a request for remark.