"Only AI Answers Above Search Results"... 300 French News Outlets File Complaint Against Google

Traffic Down 38 Percent After Google AI Overview Launch
"Google Should Pay for Content Usage," Publishers Ask Antitrust Authorities
Google Responds: "AI Enables More Complex Queries"

French newspaper publishers have filed a complaint with antitrust authorities against Google, claiming that they are losing readers due to Google's artificial intelligence (AI) article summary feature.

Google logo. Reuters Yonhap News

According to Yonhap News, the General Press Alliance (APIG), which includes about 300 outlets such as French daily newspapers, local publications, and weeklies, announced in a press release on the 11th (local time) that it had requested action from competition authorities regarding Google's AI-powered search feature.

The controversial features are 'AI Overview' and 'AI Mode', which Google introduced in France at the end of last month. When a user enters a search query, these features display an AI-generated answer compiled from multiple sources above the regular website links. News publishers are concerned that once users get the information they need from the summary, they have no reason to click through to the original articles. They estimate that this has caused a 33% to 38% drop in member sites’ web traffic. Furthermore, they argue that since Google's AI generates answers using news articles as source material, Google should pay for content usage.

Google, however, claims that “thanks to AI summaries, users can ask more complex questions and access new content,” adding that “tools are also provided for publishers to control how their content is used.”

This is not the first time the two sides have clashed. The conflict originated from the copyright directive the European Union introduced in 2019. This measure allows news publishers to demand compensation when search engines or social networking services (SNS) distribute their news content. French news publishers cited this as grounds to request fees from Google.

When France's competition authority determined that Google was not negotiating in good faith, it imposed a fine of 500 million euros (approximately 685.3 billion won at the time) in 2021. It was not until June of the following year that both sides finally reached an agreement on a content usage contract. However, this deal did not last long. In March 2024, Google was fined an additional 250 million euros (approximately 360 billion won at that time) for failing to provide the necessary data for calculating the fees. At that time, Google pledged to “negotiate sincerely with publishers and uphold the principles of transparency and non-discrimination.”

This is the point of contention for the publishers. APIG criticized Google for “unilaterally implementing new ways to use news content without prior approval or payment, which constitutes a breach of its commitments.” The group added, “The purpose of this complaint is to renegotiate the terms. Publishers are ready to support and facilitate these new usages, but only within a balanced framework based on mutual negotiation and compensation.”

Similar issues are being raised across Europe. The European Publishers Council filed a separate antitrust complaint in February, claiming that publishers are being forced to choose between allowing their articles to be included in Google’s AI answers, or losing their essential distribution via search engines. The European Commission has also been investigating since December last year whether Google’s use of publisher content to train and operate AI services without proper compensation violates competition law.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.