Published by NewsPR Today | July 2025
A group called the Independent Publishers Alliance has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) against Google, according to a report by Reuters.
The complaint is about Google’s new AI Overviews—a feature that shows AI-generated summaries at the top of search results. These summaries answer users’ questions directly, so people often don’t click on the actual websites listed below.
Publishers say this is a big problem because they lose website traffic, readers, and advertising income. Many news sites rely on Google to bring them visitors, and fewer clicks mean less revenue.
The alliance says that Google is using their content to create these AI summaries without asking and without offering any payment. They also claim there’s no real way to stop it. If publishers block Google from using their content for AI, they risk disappearing from normal search results, too.
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In their complaint, they warn that this could cause “serious and lasting harm” to journalism, especially for independent and local news outlets.
Google has responded by saying that AI Overviews are meant to help users and that its search engine still sends billions of visits to websites every day.
Google adds that factors other than AI can also affect traffic.
Regulators from the EU and the UK are currently looking into the complaint, which may result in modifications to Google’s AI response display or even penalties or new regulations.
This case may influence how people obtain news and reliable information in the future and how internet searches are conducted.
