tl;dr: AI-powered search is degrading the web's function as a reliable archive: Google's AI summaries hallucinate basic facts, Wikipedia traffic is collapsing as AI scrapes its content directly, the Internet Archive is under legal and technical siege, and entire sites like FiveThirtyEight are being deleted wholesale. The author argues governments should treat search and digital preservation as sovereign public infrastructure, pointing to European moves like France's Qwant adoption and a German court ruling holding Google liable for AI-generated falsehoods as models for reclaiming control over collective digital memory.