A group of independent publishers has filed an antitrust complaint against Google with the European Commission, alleging that the company’s AI-generated search summaries, known as AI Overviews, are harming their traffic, readership, and revenue.
The complaint, submitted by the Independent Publishers Alliance and seen by Reuters, also calls for interim measures to prevent what it describes as “irreparable harm” to publishers.
The Alliance is backed by digital advertising groups and nonprofit organizations like the Movement for an Open Web and Foxglove Legal CIC.
AI Overviews are summaries automatically generated by Google’s large language models and displayed at the top of search results in over 100 countries.
Google began monetizing these summaries with ads in May 2025, as part of its broader push to integrate artificial intelligence into its core search engine.
AI is causing harm to publishers
The publishers said the AI overview has become harmful to their business as it sidelines them, and they continue to lose revenue due to a lack of clicks on their content.
“Google’s core search engine service is misusing web content for its AI Overviews, which have caused, and continue to cause, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers. This includes loss of traffic, readership, and revenue,” the complaint stated.
- According to the filing, publishers have no way to prevent their content from being used to train Google’s AI models or to appear in AI Overviews unless they also opt out of Google Search entirely, which would severely impact visibility.
- The complaint argues that this puts original content at a disadvantage, as AI Overviews display information generated from publisher material while pushing actual publisher links lower in search results.
- The European Commission declined to comment on the matter, while the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirmed it had received the complaint.
Google’s response
Google, in response, said it drives billions of clicks to websites daily and argued that AI in Search expands discovery.
“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 said.
The tech giant also dismissed allegations of traffic loss, stating that such claims are often based on “highly incomplete and skewed data,” and emphasized that fluctuations in website traffic can result from multiple factors, including seasonality and changes in user interest or algorithm updates.
More insights
As AI becomes more integrated into everyday search, tensions between tech platforms and content providers are expected to intensify, particularly over issues of content usage, visibility, and fair compensation.
The Independent Publishers Alliance has called for immediate regulatory intervention to ensure competition and protect public access to diverse sources of information.
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