Google receives antitrust complaint over AI Overview

Google has received an antitrust complaint in the European Union over its AI Overview feature in its search engine from a group of independent publishers, who also asked for interim measures to prevent alleged irreparable harm to them, Reuters reported, citing court documents.

The AI-powered Review feature gives Google search users a condensed answer to their query, but it also worries content creators and website owners who lose traffic because of it. In an attempt to combat this, The Independent Publishers Alliance filed a complaint with the European Commission on June 30 alleging that Google is abusing its monopoly in the online search market.

"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. 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 document states.

The Independent Publishers Alliance website states that it is a non-profit community that protects the rights of independent publishers. In addition, The Movement for an Open Web and Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company joined the complaint. They state that measures are necessary to prevent serious irreparable harm to competition and to ensure access to news.

They said the interim measure was necessary to prevent serious irreparable harm to competition and to ensure access to news. The three organisations also filed a similar complaint seeking interim measures with UK regulators.