Google has officially launched its “AI Overviews” in France. You might remember a time, not so long ago, when Google hesitated to deploy this technology in the country, citing the watchful eye of the Autorité de la concurrence.
That hesitation is officially dead. Google has chosen to storm the beachhead, deploying its AI-generated answers directly into the search results of French users.
Why the sudden change of heart? Because Google has mastered the art of the regulatory blitzkrieg: act first, litigate later, and move faster than regulators can possibly respond.
For years, we have watched European regulators attempt to rein in Google’s anticompetitive behavior. The European Commission has issued historic, headline-grabbing fines. But look closely at the Google Shopping case. By the time the Commission issued its decision in 2017, nearly a decade after Google launched its “Universal Search” One Boxes for its own products at the top of results pages, Google had already spent years extracting illegal profits and distorting the market. The resulting fine? A mere fraction of the total revenue Google bankrolled during its years of non-compliance. Google appealed the 2017 Decision and eventually lost its final appeal before the EU Courts in 2024. It is now faced with damages cases from Price Runner, Idealo, Kelkoo, Connexity, Foundem, Allegro and a range of others. To Google, these fines and damages awards are not a deterrent. Instead, they are simply a well calculated cost of doing business, a very profitable strategy at that.
But even if regulators could magically calculate and claw back 100% of the revenue Google makes from its illegal non-compliance with prior judgments, it wouldn’t matter. The AI Overviews launch proves that Google is playing for a much bigger prize than short-term revenue.
Google’s ultimate goal is to become the primary interface for consumers to access online information, rather than the portal by which they navigate to competing digital properties. By intercepting the user at the search bar and presenting its own AI-generated answer, Google keeps the user on its own property. This strategy prevents users from discovering and navigating to the digital properties of creators, publishers, and businesses who actually built the value. It starves the open web of traffic they need to continue funding their own businesses. Capturing that top-ranked position in the Search Engine Results Page and keeping consumers locked into its platform is worth exponentially more than any fine the European Commission could ever draft.
In the face of this market seizure, regulators and industry groups are proposing limited remedies. Publisher opt-outs from AI are an important first step but they don’t answer the question in its entirety. Google has strip mined the entire web and is using that data to crush what remains so telling it to stop harvesting any more is too little, too late.
Similarly, slapping “user choice” conduct requirements on Google will not stop their momentum. Google has a notorious, documented history of weaponizing “nagware” to coerce users into doing exactly what it wants. Look at its strategy of getting users to use Chrome. Look at its requirement for users to sign up to everything when they sign in to Android. Perhaps most tellingly, look at “Project Narnia,” Google’s insidious strategy to endlessly nag users into disclosing their identity to access Google services that do not require authentication. By forcing users to log in and divulge their identities under the guise of “security” or “personalization,” Google strips away any pretense of meaningful choice. They will deploy the same dark patterns to force users into accepting AI Overviews, wearing them down until they simply surrender to Google’s preferred defaults.
The launch of AI Overviews in France is not a product update. This pre-emptive launch is an annexation of the open web. Regulators must wake up to the reality that post-hoc punishments and opt-out checkboxes cannot stop a monopolist executing a blitzkrieg.
If the open web is to survive, antitrust authorities must move from issuing fines to imposing immediate, structural injunctions before the independent web is erased entirely.