Remember when Google’s whole thing was getting you off their website as fast as possible? Yeah, those days are long gone. The company that once promised to send you elsewhere quickly has completely flipped the script, and now they’re building AI tools specifically designed to keep you scrolling in their ecosystem forever. But Yahoo? They’re trying something different, and it’s honestly kind of refreshing.

Yahoo just rolled out some new tools within Yahoo Scout, their AI search engine currently in beta, and they’re making a bold move: actually supporting publishers and the open web. This is a big deal because AI has absolutely devastated traffic for news outlets and content creators. According to recent research from Chartbeat, small publishers lost 60 percent of their search traffic between December 2024 and December 2025. Medium-sized publishers took a 47 percent hit, while even large publishers lost 22 percent. These numbers are brutal, and they’re mostly because AI companies have been scraping, training on, and repurposing publishers’ stories without permission or payment.

Here’s where Yahoo Scout stands out. When you get an answer from Yahoo Scout, it includes clear attribution and links back to the original publishers and sources. That’s not accidental, it’s literally Yahoo’s strategy. As Eric Feng, SVP and GM of Yahoo Research Group, explained it: “The open web is essential for building quality AI experiences and we are committed to building Scout in a way that’s trusted by users and sustainable for publishers”.

Google, on the other hand, has been quietly moving in the opposite direction. Remember that part of Google’s old mission statement about having people leave their website as quickly as possible? That’s basically ancient history now. Today, Google is actively engineering ways to keep you within their ecosystem. Recent AI Overviews changes mean that clicking “Show More” now takes you to AI Mode instead of actual publisher websites. This is what SEO experts are calling Google’s most aggressive move yet to trap users in their own products.

Yahoo is also launching MyScout, a personalized AI homepage that pulls together content from Yahoo Mail, News, Finance, and Sports to create custom daily briefings for users. They’re also launching publisher brand pages within Yahoo News to highlight publishers who syndicate content on their platform.

The contrast here is wild. On one hand, you’ve got Google using their dominance in search to essentially lock people into their AI products, which tanks traffic for independent publishers, journalists, and creators who actually make the internet worth searching in the first place. On the other hand, you’ve got Yahoo building an AI tool that remembers what the internet actually is: a network of websites and creators who deserve credit and traffic for their work.

It’s not revolutionary, but it’s increasingly rare.