Report from Reuters
In Brief – EU antitrust regulators have circulated a questionnaire to online publishers seeking feedback on Google’s policy to let them opt out of AI results without affecting their rankings in Google search. The feedback will influence the EU’s antitrust investigation into Google leveraging its search dominance to grow its AI services. Many publishers have complained that Google unfairly used publisher content for their AI services without compensation, and that Google’s AI Overviews are diverting valuable search traffic from websites, harming website ad revenues. Google announced a new AI opt-out policy for publishers in June, the same day the UK antitrust watchdog ordered it to allow publishers the ability to stop their content from being used in Google’s AI features without being demoted in Google Search. The EU is asking publishers if they intend to use the opt-out, the factors influencing their decisions, and views on changes to Google’s search box announced in May.
Context – The chatbot-search convergence is well underway, and it was always going to be a bumpy ride, especially for Google, the dominant traditional search provider. Linking traditional search results to its ability to access data for AI raised hackles from publishers everywhere. AI competitors also must have been complaining to regulators. In June, the UK CMA ordered Google to make changes to its AI-powered search features to provide clearer attribution and direct links to publisher content in AI-generated search results and to offer publishers an effective and granular opt-out of AI results without any ranking penalties in traditional search. Google says its new policy complies with the CMA rules, and they are now being applied globally. In Europe, AI competitors will soon be getting access to Google search data through a DMA “specification proceeding” directing the search giant to set up a data sharing regime, and we expect the Commission to impose “interim measures” on Google as part of their antitrust investigation that will require them to continue adhering to their AI opt-out policy in the EU, if not add a few more requirements to show that they can.