“Google’s response to the CMA’s proposed conduct requirements in search fall predictably far short of the mark. At this stage, the minimum acceptable condition for Google should be that it must unbundle its AI Overviews from its search products and that it is forced to pay a reasonable market rate to publishers in order to license content for AI. Fiddling around with marginal publisher controls and source attribution simply isn’t enough to solve the problems that Google has created. Google is only able to force its AIOs on consumers and publishers through its monopoly in search so these anticompetitive actions must be curtailed.
“Google claims that it doesn’t ‘give our own products special treatment’ in search results but the presence of a AIO at the top of many search results pages makes a nonsense of this claim. Google’s actions are severely harming publishers now and the UK’s diverse media ecosystem is suffering as a result. The CMA need to reject Google’s weak response and act now to save independent publishing and content creation before its too late.”