Web Search API: Reshaping the paradigm of information acquisition

The Web Search API is not a new toy, it is a new landlord.

When Cloudflare promoted the Web Search API to AI Gateway in October 2026, opening up three suppliers, Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup, with zero data retention, and billing based on the meter price without price increase, it looked like it was doing infrastructure. In fact, it is cutting the cake: whoever controls the entrance of "online search" will get the right to define PageRank in the era of big models. In the past, searching was for users to enter keywords, algorithm to spit out links, and people to click on them to determine whether they are true or false; now Agents help you search, pick, judge, and give answers. Users don't even have to click. This is not efficiency improvement, it is cognitive outsourcing.

Cloudflare's curl command hides ambitions: provider: "ceramic", limit: 5, gatewayId: "default". Each of the three suppliers has its own origins-Exa does neural search, Linkup focuses on real-time, and Ceramic conducts knowledge mapping. Cloudflare does not make its own index. It acts as a toll station, a ledger, and an auditor. All requests go through the AI Gateway, the logs belong to it, the credit limit belongs to it, and even the BYOK model with your own API Key can pass through its gateway. This business model is textbook-level: it doesn't produce water, makes water pipes, and installs water meters into your own server. Mathew Prince said on HN in 2023,"We want to make Cloudflare of AI", but now it has fulfilled-it does not want to make a model