Google’s AI Overviews face EU antitrust complaint from independent publishers

New Delhi: Alphabet’s Google is under fire in the European Union as a coalition of independent publishers, led by the Independent Publishers Alliance, has filed a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission. 

The complaint, dated June 30, accused Google of abusing its market dominance through its AI Overviews feature, which the publishers claim is causing significant harm to their businesses by reducing traffic, readership, and revenue.

Google’s AI Overviews, rolled out globally in over 100 countries, provide AI-generated summaries displayed prominently at the top of search results, often replacing traditional hyperlinks to external websites. Since May 2024, Google has also integrated advertisements into these summaries, further monetising the feature. While Google touts AI Overviews as a way to enhance user experience and create new opportunities for content discovery, publishers argue that it unfairly exploits their content without consent or compensation, effectively siphoning clicks away from original sources.

According to news reports, the Independent Publishers Alliance, joined by the Movement for an Open Web and UK-based nonprofit Foxglove Legal, alleged that Google’s practices violate competition rules by forcing publishers into a no-win situation: allow their content to be used for AI training and summaries or risk losing visibility in Google’s search results entirely.

Data from analytics firm Similarweb underscores the publishers’ concerns, showing that news-related searches ending without a click-through to external sites have surged from 56% to nearly 69% since AI Overviews launched. 

Organic traffic to news sites has ascended to below 1.7 billion monthly visits by May 2025, down from a peak of 2.3 billion in mid-2024.

Google has defended its AI Overviews, with a spokesperson stating that the feature “creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered” and that the company sends billions of clicks to websites daily. Google also argued that traffic fluctuations can result from various factors, such as seasonal demand and algorithmic updates, and dismissed claims of harm as being based on “incomplete and skewed data.”