European publishers challenge Google over AI search summaries

A group of independent publishers in Europe has filed an antitrust complaint against Google, accusing the tech giant of abusing its dominance in online search with its AI-generated summaries, known as AI Overviews. The complaint, submitted to the European Commission, also seeks interim measures to prevent what the publishers describe as “irreparable harm” to their businesses, as per a Reuters report.

Read more: Google pushes back on EU's DMA, citing innovation concerns

The dispute centers on Google’s AI Overviews, which provide users with machine-generated summaries that appear above traditional search results in more than 100 countries. The company began adding advertisements to these summaries last May as part of its broader strategy to integrate artificial intelligence into its core search product.

According to a document dated June 30 and reviewed by Reuters, the Independent Publishers Alliance argues that Google’s AI Overviews siphon traffic and revenue away from publishers by prominently displaying summaries created using publishers’ content, leaving original reporting buried below.

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 complaint states.

The publishers argue they have no meaningful way to prevent their content from being used to train Google’s large language models or to generate summaries without sacrificing their presence in search results entirely.

The Reuters report quoted a Google spokesperson who defended the company’s approach, saying its search engine sends billions of clicks to websites daily and that new AI features in search “enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered.”

The Independent Publishers Alliance, which describes itself as a nonprofit advocating for independent publishers, filed the complaint alongside the Movement for an Open Web —a coalition of publishers and digital advertisers — and Foxglove, a British nonprofit focused on technology accountability.

The publishers are seeking interim measures to prevent what they say is serious and irreparable harm to competition and to safeguard access to news.

Read more: California jury slams Google with $314 mn data misuse fine