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Google Hit With EU Antitrust Complaint Over AI Overviews

Independent publishers are worried about Google AI Overviews, trained on fresh journalistic content, filling up search results.

Headshot of Imad Khan
Headshot of Imad Khan
Imad Khan Former Senior Reporter
Imad was a senior reporter covering Google and internet culture. Hailing from Texas, Imad started his journalism career in 2013 and has amassed bylines with The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, Tom's Guide and Wired, among others.
Expertise Google | AI | Internet Culture
Imad Khan
3 min read
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Google's AI Overviews are taking over online search.

 James Martin/CNET

A group of publishers has filed an antitrust complaint in the European Union against Google over its use of AI Overviews, Reuters reported last week. AI Overviews are AI-generated results trained on content across the internet that appears at the top of Google searches.

The complaint comes from a group of independent publishers who want the European Commission to take action against Google scraping and repackaging their content, according to a document seen by Reuters.

"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 reads in part. The complaint also said that publishers don't have the option to opt out of their material being used for training without also losing visibility in Search.

"More than any other company, Google prioritizes sending traffic to the web, and we send billions of clicks to websites each day. New AI experiences in Search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. 

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Google argues that AI Overviews send higher quality clicks to sites. These are users who spend more time on publications. Even then, it's hard to know if the potential gain from higher-quality clicks offsets the overall alleged traffic drop due to people getting AI-generated answers instantly in Search. 

The competition team at the Spokesperson's Service of the European Commission could only confirm that it received the complaint. The Independent Publisher's Alliance didn't respond to a request for comment.

Publisher traffic across the internet is currently in freefall, with some of the biggest sites across the internet seeing drops of 27 to 59%, according to estimates from Similarweb. Already, publishers are looking towards a "Google Zero" future in which sites build direct connections with readers and rely less on people stumbling upon sites through online search. 

Without the mass influx of clicks through search, many sites, including CNN and The Verge, are erecting paywalls, asking readers to subscribe to access content. At the same time, the publishing industry is pushing back hard, filing lawsuits against OpenAI, Microsoft and Perplexity over their use of copyrighted material to train AI models. 

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)  

AI companies are also pushing back in court, saying their use of publisher content amounts to "fair use." Courts, in some instances, are agreeing with Big Tech. 

It's unsurprising that publishers are being defensive of their content. Already, the publishing industry has seen a major effect on its business, leading to layoffs and closures. 2,900 local newspapers have closed in the US since 2005, according to a study from Northwestern University. 2025 has also been a tough year to be a journalist, with layoffs hitting CNN, Vox, HuffPost and NBC.Â