Publishers File Antitrust Complaint in Europe Targeting Google’s AI Overviews

The Independent Publishers Alliance has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission, alleging that Google’s AI Overviews represent an abuse of the company’s market power in online search.

The association alleged in its complaint that by positioning these artificial intelligence (AI)-generated summaries, which use publishers’ material, at the top of its search results, Google disadvantages the publishers’ original content, Reuters reported in a Friday (July 4) article that was promoted in an Independent Publishers Alliance post on LinkedIn.

“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 association wrote in its complaint, according to the report.

Asked about the complaint by Reuters, a Google spokesperson said the company’s search engine provides websites with clicks.

“New AI experiences in Search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered,” the spokesperson said in the report.

Google began the rollout of AI Overviews in May 2024, saying they would frequently appear at the top of search results, often replacing the traditional website links.

PYMNTS reported at the time that this shift aimed to provide users faster access to information but could alter how businesses approach search engine optimization (SEO) and online advertising.

Google made some updates to the AI-generated summaries in August 2024, saying it would display links more prominently to make it easier for users to discover content from publishers, businesses and creators.

“With AI Overviews, we’re seeing that people have been visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions,” Hema Budaraju, senior director of product management, search at Google, said at the time in a blog post. “And when peple click from search result pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality for websites—meaning users are more likely to spend more time on the sites they visit.”

It was reported in May 2024 that publishers and content creators who rely on search engine traffic for revenue were concerned that AI Overviews could adversely affect the ecosystem of online content creation and dissemination.

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