European publishers have filed a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission against Google for “abusing” their dominant position in search services by taking “publishers’ content without consent” and using it to create AI Overview results that diverts traffic away from websites.
The European Publishers Council (EPC) said Google and its parent-company Alphabet are “abusing their dominant position in general search services”, in breach of Article 102 TFEU, through the “deployment of AI Overviews and AI Mode within Google Search”.
The EPC complaint argues that Google is using publishers’ journalistic content “without authorisation, without effective opt-out mechanisms, and without fair remuneration, while at the same time displacing traffic, audiences, and revenues that are essential to the sustainability of professional journalism”.
It added that by embedding AI-generated summaries as well as chatbot-style responses into its search platform Google has changed its search function from a referral service into an “answer engine” that ensures the user remains on Google’s own site rather than clicking onto the publisher’s website.
Chairman of the EPC, Christian Van Thillo, said this complaint is about stopping a “dominant gatekeeper” from using its market power to “take publishers’ content without consent, without fair compensation, and without giving publishers any realistic way to protect their journalism”.
“AI Overviews and AI Mode fundamentally undermine the economic compact that has sustained the open web. If these practices continue, the damage will be structural and irreversible.”
The EPC noted that while some other AI providers have entered into licensing agreements with some publishers, Google has “largely avoided doing so” and instead “relies on its control of search to secure ongoing access to content without payment”.
The council added that publishers are left with an extremely difficult choice. In order to remain visible on Google search, they have to accept that their content is crawled, reproduced, and repurposed for the company’s AI features.
“In practice, opting out of AI use entails a loss of search visibility that most publishers cannot afford,” the council alleges. The EPC added that the complaint alleges that Google’s practices “involve systematic breaches of EU copyright law”.
In response to the complaint, a Google spokesperson said: “These inaccurate claims are an attempt to hold back helpful new AI features that Europeans want. We design our AI features to surface great content across the web and we provide easy-to-use controls for them to manage their content.”
In December, the EU Commission opened an investigation into possible anti-competitive practices by Google in the use of online content — including the content of web publishers as well as content uploaded to YouTube — for AI purposes.
