A coalition of independent publishers, led by the Independent Publishers Alliance and bolstered by groups including the Movement for an Open Web and Foxglove Legal, submitted a formal antitrust complaint to the European Commission on June 30, 2025, according to Reuters. The complaint asserts that Google is misusing its dominance in online search by deploying “AI Overviews”—compact, AI-generated summaries that appear atop search results—to divert traffic and ad revenue from publishers’ original content.
These summaries are created using publishers’ own material, yet the companies claim there is no way to opt out of having their content included—unless they remove their sites entirely from Google’s search index. The publishers argue that this practice effectively penalizes them: any attempt to exclude their content from AI summaries would result in dramatically reduced visibility in standard search listings.
Supporters of the complaint cite data showing a significant rise in “zero-click” searches—instances where users receive answers directly via AI Overviews, bypassing publisher websites. According to digital analytics firm SimilarWeb, 37 of the top 50 U.S. news domains have seen year-over-year traffic declines since May 2024, while the share of zero-click queries rose from 56% to 69% by May 2025.
The filing also requests an “interim measure” to pause or limit AI Overviews while investigations proceed, arguing that independent journalism is facing “serious irreparable harm”. Foxglove’s co-executive director Rosa Curling described the situation as an “existential threat” to independent news outlets.
Google, for its part, contends that AI Overviews enhance user experience by driving “billions of clicks” to publisher sites and broadening discovery of content, while adding that traffic fluctuations can be due to seasonal trends or algorithm updates. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is also reviewing a parallel complaint, and similar concerns have emerged in the United States through a private EdTech lawsuit.
This case places Google at the center of a broader regulatory challenge, coming amid heightened scrutiny of its practices under the EU’s Digital Markets Act and growing antitrust pressure globally.
