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EU Takes on Google's Search Results AI Content Grab

ended 10. December 2025

The European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Google's AI search tools, examining whether the tech giant is scraping publisher content without compensation while blocking rivals from accessing the same data. The probe focuses on AI Overviews and AI Mode, features that generate answers using website content and YouTube videos without paying creators or giving them genuine opt-out options.

The investigation comes as multiple publishers including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and News Corp have sued AI companies like Perplexity for copyright infringement, with many seeking content-licensing deals. However, the EU's competition focus differs from these copyright cases – it's examining whether Google's dominant market position lets it access training data that rival AI companies can't reach, particularly YouTube content.

Google's response claims the investigation "risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever," while the EC states it will examine "to what extent the generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode by Google is based on web publishers' content without appropriate compensation for that, and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search."

We want your views:

  • Does paying for scraped content solve the problem, or do we need AI that credits and compensates per actual use?
  • How do you feel about summarised content that does not reflect you or your business values?
  • How much money have you wasted on content marketing to drive organic search result traffic that is now syphoned off?
  • Are you using a different search engine because too much of Google's results pages are all AI and ads content above the fold?

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
For years, Google punished thin content with its Panda update and rewarded businesses that created comprehensive, expert-led cornerstone content.

Thousands of SMEs invested time and money building those 10,000-word guides, detailed tutorials, and in-depth resources because Google told them that's how you earn visibility and traffic. They played by the rules. They created quality. They won rankings.

Now Google's used that same content, the stuff businesses were incentivised to create, to train AI that answers questions without ever sending traffic back to the source. It's not just scraping. It's systematic extraction dressed as innovation. Google created the content flywheel, then redirected it to feed their own AI while cutting out the businesses that built it.
The EU investigation matters, but won't fix this. You can't pay publishers today for content you're using to make them irrelevant tomorrow. Real accountability means AI that drives traffic back to credible sources.
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Darryl Dhoffer
Founder at The Mortgage Geezer
Paid ranking bias in Google's AI responses is concerning. Deep-pocketed companies' content is often scraped for AI use. High ranking (via ads/SEO) doesn't guarantee the company can fulfil the AI-rendered information, potentially making the output inaccurate or useless. Apparently, Google aims for factual accuracy using automated algorithms that check content quality signals like E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and cross-reference against its Knowledge Graph (whatever that is!). They also rely on human Quality Raters and user feedback to address inaccuracies quickly - about as much use as a judging a book by its cover in my opinion.
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Rohit Parmar-Mistry
Founder at Pattrn Data
Cry me a river with the "stifling innovation" defence. It is tiresome watching Silicon Valley giants claim that paying creators for their work will somehow break the internet. Since when did "innovation" become a synonym for building a trillion-dollar empire on someone else’s unpaid labour?

I work with SMEs investing heavily in high-quality content and SEO. For Google to siphon that off without sending traffic back is parasitic. What is the actual expectation here? That businesses should simply bankrupt themselves creating value, only to pray at the altar of Google for a mere smattering of leads while Big Tech feasts on the profits? It is a blatantly abusive relationship.

If your AI business model collapses the moment you have to pay for the raw materials you use, you don't have an innovation problem; you have a viability problem. We need a model where creators are compensated, not bullied into a choice between being robbed or being invisible.
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Patricia McGirr
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
If AI is going to rewrite the internet, creators deserve more than crumbs. They deserve control, credit and a cut. Right now, Google’s AI tools behave like the world’s most powerful content hoover, lifting years of publisher investment, rewriting it, outranking it and keeping the rewards. Businesses have spent fortunes creating content only to watch AI flatten their work into summaries that strip out their voice, values and expertise. You end up bankrolling a system that pushes you off your own stage. And when Google can feed on everyone’s content while rivals are locked out of the same data, that’s not a marketplace. It’s a monopoly.