Google is facing an antitrust complaint in the European Union (EU) regarding its AI Overviews feature – one of the biggest Search features launched in recent years. Citing a document, a report by news agency Reuters says that a group of independent publishers has lodged the complaint with the European Commission, also requesting an interim measure to prevent what they allege is irreparable harm to their businesses.Google’s AI Overviews provide AI-generated summaries that appear prominently at the top of search results, above traditional hyperlinks to relevant webpages. This feature is currently available to users in over 100 countries, with advertisements having been integrated into AI Overviews since last May. The report says that while Google views the integration of AI into search as a major strategic move, it has ignited significant concern among some content providers, particularly publishers.
Who has filed the complaint and what Google has to say
The complaint, filed by the Independent Publishers Alliance and dated June 30, accuses Google of abusing its dominant market position in online search.The document asserts that “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 publishers argue that by placing its own AI-generated summaries – which are created using publisher material – at the top of search results, Google unfairly disadvantages their original content.A key point of contention in the complaint is the alleged lack of choice for publishers.“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 complaint states.In response to the allegations, a Google spokesperson stated that the company sends billions of clicks to websites daily. “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 added.