Google Zero changes how the customer discovers and reaches a service. HTTPS-by-default changes how the customer is identified and charged once they get there. Together they change everything.
Data out last week showed how 68% of Google traffic ended in a no-click scenario, showing just how the concept of Google Zero impacts on generating traffic. But this is only half the problem. Even when Google does send a customer to a telemedia service, HTTPS-by-default could make it much harder to identify that user and convert them through the frictionless DCB journeys on which the sector has traditionally relied.
If Google Zero changes how customers arrive, HTTPS-by-default changes what happens once they get there – and together they expose just how vulnerable the current acquisition model has become.
At best, AI-led search might deliver fewer but better-informed prospects. That could soften some of the commercial damage caused by lower traffic. It does not, however, replace the silent mobile identification that traditional two-click DCB flows lose when HTTP header enrichment stops working.
In fact, without action, the two changes could compound one another.
| For a deep dive into what Google Zero means across the telemedia ecosystem click here
One hits acquisition, the other conversion
The traditional browser-based telemedia model can be reduced to something like this:
Google advertisement or search result → landing page → header enrichment → two-click DCB subscription.
Google Zero weakens the first step because AI Overviews and AI Mode can answer, compare and recommend without requiring the user to visit a merchant. Google says these systems use multiple related searches to construct responses and may provide links, but independent evidence suggests that AI answers often reduce outbound clicking. Google itself claims that those who do click from AI results may be more engaged and more likely to convert.
HTTPS-by-default weakens the final part of the journey. Traditional header enrichment relies on the operator being able to intercept an unencrypted HTTP request and attach a network-derived identifier, such as an MSISDN or token. End-to-end HTTPS prevents an intermediary from reading or modifying those headers. Google enabled its secure-connections setting for Enhanced Safe Browsing users with Chrome 147 in April 2026 and plans to make it the default for public sites with Chrome 154 in October 2026.
Telemedia industry estimates suggest that as much as 90% of existing two-click flows could be affected and that identification failures could reduce DCB conversion substantially on Chrome traffic. These are industry projections rather than measured global outcomes, but they illustrate the scale of the risk.
So, the likely combined effect is:
fewer visitors × more friction at payment = a disproportionately larger reduction in subscribers.
A purely illustrative example shows the danger. If Google Zero reduced relevant traffic by 30%, while the loss of seamless identification reduced conversion by 40%, the resulting subscriber volume would be only 42% of its previous level, before considering any improvement in traffic quality.
Where Google Zero could soften the impact
There is one limited way in which Google Zero might help. Users who arrive after an extended AI conversation could be better qualified. They may already know the service price, renewal frequency, content proposition, network requirements and cancellation terms. Instead of clicking an impulsive advertisement, they may have asked Google to compare several services and selected one deliberately.
That could produce:
- higher landing-page conversion among those who arrive;
- fewer accidental or poorly understood subscriptions;
- better retention;
- fewer refunds, complaints and chargebacks;
- greater willingness to complete an OTP or other authentication step.
Google says clicks from AI Overview experiences tend to be “higher quality”, measured through indicators such as time spent on the destination site. That is Google’s own assessment and should not be treated as proof that every telemedia service will see better conversion, but the underlying proposition is plausible.
However, better intent cannot by itself repair the payment flow. A highly motivated customer may tolerate an additional OTP, phone-number entry or operator login. But that is still less frictionless than automatic recognition – and every extra step creates abandonment.
Google Zero may therefore improve the quality of the prospect while HTTPS-by-default damages the mechanics of converting that prospect.
Google’s increasing control of the journey
The more significant relationship between the two developments is strategic rather than technical. Both changes reduce the ability of operators, merchants and content providers to control the open mobile-web journey.
With Google Zero, discovery and comparison increasingly happen inside Google’s interface. Google decides which services are mentioned, how they are described and which links or advertisements are shown.
With HTTPS-by-default, the browser protects the connection from network-level intervention. This is positive for consumer security, but it also removes the operator’s ability to use the network as an invisible identity layer inside conventional web traffic.
The old model relied on two assumptions:
- Google would send the consumer to the merchant.
- The operator could identify the consumer once they arrived.
Both assumptions are now weakening., making telemedia more dependent on platforms at the top of the funnel and on explicit authentication and payment tools at the bottom.
Google Zero could favour cards and wallets
There is also a danger that Google Zero makes the HTTPS problem worse for DCB rather than better. AI search is developing towards agentic action. Google’s guidance now explicitly discusses browser agents, AI systems that interact with websites and emerging protocols that allow agents to complete tasks.
Imagine someone asks: “Find me a mobile gaming subscription under £5 a month, make sure it works on Android and subscribe me.”
An AI agent may already have access to a stored card or wallet credential. It can potentially use that credential without needing to identify the customer through the mobile network. Cards, Google Pay and other wallets therefore fit relatively naturally into an AI-controlled purchase journey.
Traditional DCB does not, at least not while it depends on the consumer opening an HTTP landing page over mobile data so the operator can inject an identifier.
Unless DCB becomes directly accessible through secure APIs, AI-led discovery and agentic commerce could push more telemedia transactions towards cards, wallets and account-to-account payments. Google Zero would then amplify the movement away from browser-based DCB rather than compensate for the loss of header enrichment.
DCB has to become an API, not a browser trick
Google Zero could ultimately provide an answer to HTTPS-by-default, but only after DCB is rebuilt.
The replacement for header enrichment is not more traffic, but a secure, standardised identity and payment layer that works over HTTPS and can be called by merchants, apps, aggregators and eventually AI agents.
Possible approaches include operator APIs that resolve an IP address or connection to a subscriber, secure entitlement-channel authentication, operator login, app-based SIM authentication and CAMARA or GSMA Open Gateway APIs. The CAMARA Number Verification API, for example, is intended to let a business verify that a number corresponds to the device or network connection without relying on traditional HTTP header injection. GSMA Open Gateway also includes carrier-billing APIs.
These approaches could recreate much of the convenience of header enrichment while operating within a secure HTTPS environment.
The future journey could become:
AI recommendation → merchant or operator API → network number verification → explicit customer consent → carrier-billing API → service activation.
That is more technically sophisticated than the old HTTP model, but it is also more portable. It could work inside apps, messaging platforms, operator portals, AI assistants and other environments where browser header enrichment was never dependable.
A shift from impulse to intent
Taken together, Google Zero and HTTPS-by-default point towards a structural change in telemedia.
The industry has historically excelled at turning large volumes of lightly qualified mobile traffic into subscriptions through very short payment journeys. Google Zero reduces the availability of that traffic, while HTTPS-by-default makes the shortest DCB journey harder to operate.
The replacement model will probably generate fewer impulsive subscriptions but potentially more intentional, better-understood and longer-lasting ones.
Services will need clearer propositions, recognisable brands, transparent pricing and renewal terms, good reviews and distinctive content if they are to be recommended by AI systems. Google’s official guidance emphasises unique, expert-led, non-commodity content rather than generic material that an AI can produce itself.
At the same time, payment will need to become multi-rail. DCB can remain important, especially for consumers without cards or in markets where operator billing has strong reach, but it will increasingly sit alongside cards, wallets, instant payments and other alternatives.
The net assessment
Google Zero does not make up for HTTPS-by-default. In the near term, their effects are more likely to multiply than cancel each other out.
Google Zero may send fewer but more commercially valuable users. That could improve retention and make additional authentication friction slightly more tolerable. But it cannot restore automatic subscriber identification.
The opportunity lies in using both disruptions to move telemedia towards a stronger model: from search-dependent acquisition to direct and diversified distribution; from anonymous commodity offers to trusted brands; and from HTTP-dependent DCB to secure, API-based payment orchestration.
In that future, Google Zero could help create more intentional demand, while Open Gateway-style identity and billing APIs replace the capability lost through HTTPS. Until those APIs are widely deployed and consistently available across operators and markets, however, Google Zero is not the solution to the HTTPS problem. It is another reason the industry must solve it quickly.
However, recent EU rulings that Google needs to open up its AI and search to rivals could well make this all change and change again.
