Google’s AI Overviews—a generative AI feature —has triggered an antitrust complaint from independent publishers in the EU, who allege that the feature harms their traffic, revenue, and long-term sustainability.

What are Google AI Overviews?

• AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of Google’s search results page, above the traditional blue links. They synthesise information from multiple sources to quickly answer user queries.
• These overviews may take the form of paragraphs, lists, or tables, and include embedded source links.

How do AI Overviews work?

• When a query is entered, Google evaluates whether a generative AI response would be helpful.
• It uses a customized version of its AI model, Gemini, combined with a method called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which pulls information from the web index in real time.
• The output is a summary backed by top web results, with clickable links for deeper exploration.

Why are publishers accusing Google?

• Reducing user click-throughs to publisher websites, since users often get their answers directly from the AI summary. This drop leads to lower ad revenue and subscriptions, which are crucial for publishers.
• Google is “misusing web content” by scraping publisher material to train its AI and display summaries—without fair compensation.
• As of May 2024, Google also began placing ads within AI Overviews, thereby monetising content created by others.
• Publishers cannot opt out of AI Overviews without also being removed from Google’s search results entirely—an unfeasible option given Google’s market dominance.

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