A gaggle of impartial publishers has filed an antitrust criticism towards Google with the European Fee, alleging that the corporate’s AI-generated search summaries, generally known as AI Overviews, are harming their visitors, readership, and income.
The criticism, submitted by the Impartial Publishers Alliance and seen by Reuters, additionally requires interim measures to forestall what it describes as “irreparable hurt” to publishers.
The Alliance is backed by digital promoting {groups} and nonprofit organizations just like the Motion for an Open Net and Foxglove Authorized CIC.
AI Overviews are summaries routinely generated by Google’s massive language fashions and displayed on the high of search leads to over 100 nations.
Google started monetizing these summaries with advertisements in Could 2025, as a part of its broader push to combine synthetic intelligence into its core search engine.
The publishers stated the AI overview has turn into dangerous to their enterprise because it sidelines them, and so they proceed to lose income because of an absence of clicks on their content material.
“Google’s core search engine service is misusing internet content material for its AI Overviews, which have brought about, and proceed to trigger, important hurt to publishers, together with information publishers. This contains lack of visitors, readership, and income,” the criticism acknowledged.
Google, in response, stated it drives billions of clicks to web sites day by day and argued that AI in Search expands discovery.
“New AI experiences in Search allow individuals to ask much more questions, which creates new alternatives for content material and companies to be found,” a Google spokesperson stated.
The tech big additionally dismissed allegations of visitors loss, stating that such claims are sometimes based mostly on “extremely incomplete and skewed information,” and emphasised that fluctuations in web site visitors may result from a number of components, together with seasonality and adjustments in person curiosity or algorithm updates.
As AI turns into extra built-in into on a regular basis search, tensions between tech platforms and content material suppliers are anticipated to accentuate, significantly over problems with content material utilization, visibility, and honest compensation.
The Impartial Publishers Alliance has referred to as for quick regulatory intervention to make sure competitors and defend public entry to various sources of data.
