A landmark legal challenge to stop Google stealing the work of British journalists has been launched in a case brought by tech justice non-profit Foxglove, the Independent Publishers Alliance, and the Movement for an Open Web (MOW).
In a complaint submitted to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), supported by leading antitrust law firm Preiskel and Co, the organisations warn that Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) are causing “serious irreparable harm” to the news industry in the UK.
The complaint details how Google is abusing its dominant position in search to take publishers’ content and use it to promote their own AI product – which competes against those same publishers, making it harder for them to reach their readers. Crucially, publishers are given no opportunity to opt out of AIOs without opting out of search altogether. Given Google controls around 90% of search requests, the result of this would be to become effectively invisible online, a devastating blow for a news organisation.
Last week, the CMA announced plans to consult on how to make Google search fairer, including providing “more control and transparency for publishers over how their content collected for search is used, including in AI-generated responses.” However, the complaint from Foxglove, the Alliance and MOW warns that news organisations are already being harmed in the UK and action is needed immediately.
In particular, publishers urgently need the ability to opt out of Google’s AI summaries without being removed from search altogether. This is a measure that has already been proposed by other leading regulators, including the US Department of Justice and the South African Competition Commission. Foxglove is warning that without immediate action, the UK – and its news industry – risks being left behind, while other states take steps to protect independent news from Google.
Foxglove is therefore seeking interim measures to prevent Google misusing publisher content pending the outcome of the CMA’s more detailed review.
When someone searches for something on Google today, instead of fetching the best results and sorting them into the familiar list of blue links, Google will often provide an autogenerated summary, or AIO.
These summaries are generated by Google’s Large Language Model (LLM) AI Gemini scaping information from the very blue links that a user would previous have been served in response to their search. In news-related searches, AIOs are based on reporting scraped from news pages written by human journalists.
Crucially, the links to the news articles Gemini uses to create AIO are pushed down “below the fold” on the search results page meaning that, in many cases, they won’t be clicked through to at all.
Rosa Curling, Director at Foxglove, said:
“It’s bad enough that Google’s AI products are stealing journalists’ work without paying for it. But worse still, that stolen work is then used to give Google an advantage over the very news organisations they stole it from. Google’s AI Overviews devastate news organisations’ ability to reach their readers online – the independent news industry is already struggling, but this risks sinking them altogether.
“It’s welcome that the CMA has woken up to this problem, but the news industry can’t afford to await the conclusions of a lengthy consultation period. We need action now. Otherwise independent media – a crucial pillar of our democracy – will be irreparably damaged by the time the regulator comes up with measures to protect it.
“The CMA needs to act urgently to ensure news organisations have a way to opt out of Google nicking their work, without Google disappearing them from search results altogether. Regulators from the US to South Africa have already realised this is the solution – the UK risks being left behind, with devastating consequences for our news outlets.”
James Rosewell, co-founder of Movement for an Open Web, said:
“Google’s AI overviews steal from publishers on two fronts. They steal publishers’ content to feed their AI model and then they use this capability to steal traffic by putting the Overview ahead of the links to the original content. This is a clear example of a proven monopolist abusing using its power to exploit content owners and discriminate against its competitors and it must be stopped now.
“The CMA are – rightly – undertaking a thorough and detailed review of potential actions against Google but we can’t just sit by in the meantime and watch as news brands get decimated. The harm to publishers is serious, significant and irreparable. We need interim action now to save the UK publishing industry before it’s too late.”
ENDS
For further information, please email press@foxglove.org.uk or call Donald Campbell on +44 (0) 7521 755 608