The European Publishers Council (EPC) has lodged a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission alleging that Google LLC and its parent company Alphabet Inc. are abusing their dominant position in general search services through the deployment of AI Overviews and AI Mode within Google Search, in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
The complaint complements the Commission’s own enforcement action announced on 9 December 2025, when it confirmed the opening of a formal antitrust investigation into whether Google has breached EU competition rules by using web publishers’ content, as well as content uploaded to YouTube, for artificial intelligence purposes. The EPC has welcomed that investigation as both timely and necessary.
Alleged exploitation of publishers’ content
According to the EPC, Google’s AI-powered search features rely extensively on high-quality journalistic content without authorisation, without effective opt-out mechanisms, and without fair remuneration. At the same time, these features allegedly displace traffic, audiences, and revenues that are critical to the economic sustainability of professional journalism.
By embedding AI-generated summaries and chatbot-style responses directly into its search interface, Google is said to have transformed Search from a referral service into an “answer engine” that substitutes original publisher content and retains users within Google’s own ecosystem. The complaint argues that professionally produced news and editorial content constitutes a critical input for AI training, retrieval-augmented generation, and output generation, given its accuracy, timeliness, structured nature, and low need for data cleaning.
Statements from the EPC
Christian Van Thillo, Chairman of the European Publishers Council, emphasised that the complaint is not an attempt to block technological progress:
“This complaint is not about resisting innovation or artificial intelligence. It is about stopping a dominant gatekeeper from using its market power to take publishers’ content without consent, without fair compensation, and without giving publishers any realistic way to protect their journalism. AI Overviews and AI Mode fundamentally undermine the economic compact that has sustained the open web.”
He further warned of long-term consequences if the practices are allowed to continue:
“If these practices continue, the damage will be structural and irreversible. No amount of money can restore lost audiences, weakened brand relationships, or eroded reader trust once publishers are disintermediated. Effective competition, media pluralism, and democratic discourse—objectives rightly at the heart of the European Democracy Shield—depend on timely and decisive enforcement.”
Impact on media pluralism and democracy
The EPC cautions that, absent regulatory intervention, smaller, regional, and specialist publishers are likely to be the first to exit the market, leading to a less diverse and less resilient information ecosystem. Such an outcome would, in the EPC’s view, conflict with the European Commission’s European Democracy Shield, which recognises independent and professional journalism as a cornerstone of democratic resilience.
The complaint also highlights a longer-term risk: as the economic base of journalism erodes, the quality and reliability of AI-generated information services may deteriorate as well, given their dependence on a continuous supply of professionally produced content.
Distortion of licensing markets
While some AI providers have entered into licensing agreements with publishers for the use of journalistic content, the EPC argues that Google has largely avoided doing so. Instead, it allegedly leverages its control over search to secure ongoing access to content without payment, thereby distorting competition and undermining the development of a functioning licensing market for AI uses of copyrighted works.
Publishers, according to the complaint, face an untenable choice. To remain visible on Google Search, they must accept that their content is crawled, reproduced, and repurposed for Google’s AI features. The technical controls cited by Google are said to offer no meaningful protection in practice, as opting out of AI use results in a loss of search visibility that most publishers cannot afford.
Competition and copyright law concerns
The EPC submits that Google’s conduct imposes unfair trading conditions on publishers as unavoidable trading partners and prevents the emergence of a viable market for licensing journalistic content for AI training, grounding, and output generation. The complaint further alleges systematic breaches of EU copyright law, including publishers’ neighbouring rights under the DSM Copyright Directive, and argues that such regulatory non-compliance constitutes a relevant indicator of exploitative abuse under EU competition law.
Requested remedies
The complaint calls on the European Commission to adopt remedies capable of restoring competitive conditions. These include meaningful publisher control over the use of their content for AI purposes, transparency regarding content usage and its economic impact, and the establishment of a fair licensing and remuneration framework that reflects the scale and value of publishers’ contributions to AI systems.