Alphabet’s Google has been hit by an EU antitrust grievance over its AI Overviews from a gaggle of impartial publishers, which has additionally requested for an interim measure to forestall allegedly irreparable hurt to them, in keeping with a doc seen by Reuters.
Google’s AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that seem above conventional hyperlinks to related webpages and are proven to customers in additional than 100 international locations. It started including commercials to AI Overviews final May.
The firm is making its largest wager by integrating AI into search however the transfer has sparked considerations from some content material suppliers corresponding to publishers.
The Independent Publishers Alliance doc, dated June 30, units out a grievance to the European Commission and alleges that Google abuses its market energy in on-line search.
“Google’s core search engine service is misusing web content for Google’s AI Overviews in Google Search, which have caused, and continue to cause, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss,” the doc mentioned.
It mentioned Google positions its AI Overviews on the high of its common search engine outcomes web page to show its personal summaries that are generated utilizing writer materials and it alleges that Google’s positioning disadvantages publishers’ unique content material.
“Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results page,” the grievance mentioned.
The Commission declined to remark.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority confirmed receipt of the grievance.
Google mentioned it sends billions of clicks to web sites every day.
“New AI experiences in Search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered,” a Google spokesperson mentioned.
The Independent Publishers Alliance’s web site says it’s a nonprofit neighborhood advocating for impartial publishers, which it doesn’t identify.
The Movement for an Open Web, whose members embody digital advertisers and publishers, and British non-profit Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company, which says it advocates for equity within the tech world, are additionally signatories to the grievance.
They mentioned an interim measure was needed to forestall severe irreparable hurt to competitors and to make sure entry to information.
Google mentioned quite a few claims about visitors from search are sometimes primarily based on extremely incomplete and skewed information.
“The reality is that sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of users, and regular algorithmic updates to Search,” the Google spokesperson mentioned.
Foxglove co-executive director Rosa Curling mentioned journalists and publishers face a dire state of affairs.
“Independent news faces an existential threat: Google’s AI Overviews,” she advised Reuters.
“That’s why with this complaint, Foxglove and our partners are urging the European Commission, along with other regulators around the world, to take a stand and allow independent journalism to opt out,” Curling mentioned.
The three teams have filed an identical grievance and a request for an interim measure to the UK competitors authority.
The complaints echoed a US lawsuit by a U.S. edtech firm which mentioned Google’s AI Overviews is eroding demand for unique content material and undermining publishers’ means to compete which have resulted in a drop in guests and subscribers.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
