It finally seems something is shifting over AI Overviews and Google’s latest exercise of market power. Reuters has exclusively revealed that a group of independent publishers has filed an antitrust complaint, largely because there is no effective way to opt-out of Google’s AI without completely destroying traffic from Google Search.
The lawsuit, lodged by the Independent Publishers Alliance on 30 June, tells the European Commission that Google is plainly abusing its dominance in search to reinforce its position through its AI technology.
The complaint argues that the roll-out of AI Overviews is gravely harming content creators through lost traffic and, therefore, lost revenue.
“Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to prevent their material from being ingested to train Google’s large language model or crawled for summaries, without forfeiting their ability to appear on Google’s general search results page”, the complaint states.
Since AI Overviews were inserted above traditional search results, reports of drastic traffic drops have multiplied, with many warning of an “existential threat” to the open web.
* Original article written in Spanish, translated with chatGPT and reviewed in English by Jorge Mediavilla.
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