Cloudflare's new policy challenges Google's AI practices
Cloudflare, the company behind a huge chunk of the internet's security, just started blocking Google's Gemini AI from crawling sites it protects.
This move is part of their new "Content Independence Day" push, which basically says: if AI wants to use people's content, it should pay for it.
The initiative was announced on July 1, 2025, as per the source articles.
Cloudflare now blocks Gemini
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince shared on X that Gemini is now blocked by default.
He explained, "We will get Google to provide ways to block Answer Box and AI Overview, without blocking classic search indexing."
In short: unless Google agrees to Cloudflare's terms (and pays up), its AI can't access tons of websites.
Cloudflare ready to take legal action against big tech
This policy is all about making sure creators get fair value when their work is used by big AIs.
Prince even hinted at possible legal action if companies like Google don't cooperate: "Worst case we'll pass a law somewhere that requires them to break out their crawlers..."
Cloudflare says they're ready to stand up for creators—and they aren't just targeting Google; Amazon and Microsoft are in the mix too.