Google Faces EU Antitrust Heat Over AI Overviews That Sap News Traffic
Google’s AI Overviews — those tidy summaries that perch atop search results — have triggered a formal antitrust complaint in Brussels. The Independent Publishers Alliance, flanked by campaigners from Movement for an Open Web and Foxglove Legal, argues the feature hijacks headlines, hoards eyeballs, and leaves original articles languishing further down the page. They’ve asked the European Commission for emergency measures, warning of “irreparable harm” if the digital traffic tap stays throttled.
Fresh SimilarWeb data backs their alarm bells: 37 of the 50 biggest U.S. news domains have logged year-on-year traffic drops since AI Overviews rolled out, and so-called “zero-click” searches on news topics now top 69 %. Regulators are paying attention; the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority just floated labeling Google a “strategic market” gatekeeper, a move that could usher in tailor-made rules for its search empire.
Google counters that its AI snippets spark more curiosity, not less, insisting it still funnels “billions of clicks” to publishers daily and that traffic swings owe as much to seasonality and algorithm tweaks as any AI widget. Yet with parallel lawsuits unfolding in the United States and Europe, the search giant’s bid to blend generative answers into traditional results now faces its toughest scrutiny to date.
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