Alphabet-owned Google is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe as a coalition of independent publishers has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission over its AI Overviews feature. The complaint also calls for an interim measure to prevent what it describes as “irreparable harm” to publishers.
Google’s AI Overviews—automated summaries that appear at the top of search results—are now live in over 100 countries and were updated in May to include advertising. While the feature is a key part of Google’s broader AI-driven search strategy, it has sparked backlash from content providers who argue it reduces traffic to their websites.
According to a document seen by Reuters, the Independent Publishers Alliance submitted a formal complaint dated June 30, accusing Google of leveraging its dominance in search to harm online publishers. “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 document states.
The complaint claims that the placement of AI Overviews—above traditional search links—favors Google’s summaries, which are built using publisher content, thereby sidelining original reporting and analysis. “Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results page,” the Alliance argues.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has acknowledged receipt of the complaint. Meanwhile, Google defended its position, saying it sends billions of clicks to websites daily and that “new AI experiences in Search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered.”
The complaint is backed by Foxglove Legal, a British nonprofit advocating for tech fairness, and the Movement for an Open Web, representing publishers and digital advertisers. Foxglove’s co-executive director, Rosa Curling, warned, “Independent news faces an existential threat: Google’s AI Overviews.”
The complainants have submitted a similar case to UK regulators, echoing concerns raised in a recent U.S. lawsuit where an edtech firm claimed AI Overviews are undercutting publisher revenues by diminishing user engagement with original content.
