Google's AI summaries: Publishers complain to EU competition authority

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Google's AI summaries have caused an outcry among publishers worldwide. Now, at the latest, it has also reached the EU Commission: In a letter to the EU competition authority, a consortium complains about the search engine giant's practices. According to the letter, the new summaries are causing irreparable economic damage to website operators and urgent action is needed.

Many of those who earn money with page views via Google search will have noticed a drop in the number of clicks: The search engine giant now offers its users AI-generated summaries of the content that can be found on the websites that appear in Google search. The result: after reading such a summary, many users do not even click on the actual sources that Google always links to.

Calls for action

Publishers around the world have already complained in droves about Google's new approach, which does not provide any remuneration for the actual authors for the use of the content in the AI summaries. For example, the News/Media Alliance (NMA), a lobbying organization with almost 2000 members from the media sector in the US and Canada, recently called it the "definition of theft".

Since this week at the latest, the issue has also been on the agenda of the EU Competition Authority in Brussels. This is because it has received a corresponding complaint about Google from various European publishers, which has also been submitted to the Reuters news agency. In it, they also demand interim measures to avert what they see as irreparable damage.

"Independent Publishers Alliance" raises accusations

The complaint comes from the Independent Publishers Alliance, which claims to be a non-profit organization that advocates for a group of independent publishers. The organization does not provide any information about the members of the group. According to Reuters, the signatories of the complaint include the "Movement for an Open Web" organization, whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, as well as the non-profit organization Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company from the UK, which claims to be committed to fairness in the tech world.

They accuse Google of abusing its market power in the online search sector. The core service of Google's search engine is therefore misusing web content for the new AI overviews. This has resulted in considerable losses in page views, readership and revenue for publishers, including news media.

Less revenue, no opt-out

Google positions its AI overviews at the top of its general search results page to display its own summaries, which are created using content from publishers. This puts the search engine operator at a disadvantage to offers with original content.

Publishers whose pages appear in Google Search have no way of deactivating the use of their material for the training of Google's AI or crawling for summaries without losing their ability to appear in Google's general search results, it continues. Removing their own offers completely from Google searches is usually not an option for publishers either – The proportion of page views that only come from Google and would otherwise be missing to generate advertising revenue and other sales is too high.

Receipt of the complaint confirmed

The European Commission, which is responsible for the EU competition authority, declined to comment. The British Competition and Markets Authority confirmed receipt of the complaint to Reuters.

The co-managing director of Foxglove, Rosa Curling, emphasized the difficult situation facing journalists and publishers. "Independent news is under existential threat from Google's AI reviews," she told Reuters. "That's why with this complaint, Foxglove and our partners are calling on the European Commission and other regulators around the world to take a stand and give independent journalists the ability to exempt their content from AI summaries," Curling said.

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