Report from The Guardian
In Brief – FIEG, the Italian federation of newspaper publishers, has announced that it has submitted a formal complaint to Agcom, Italy’s communications watchdog, calling for an investigation into Google’s AI Overviews, arguing that the search engine’s AI-generated summaries are a “traffic killer” that threatens their survival. The publishers argue that the overviews violate Google’s duties under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) by reducing click-throughs to publisher websites, unfairly competing with journalistic and editorial content, and depriving publishers of reach and ad revenue. Agcom is the Italian Digital Services Coordinator for the DSA, which has the authority to propose enforcement actions to the European Commission, which is the lead DSA enforcement authority for the largest online platforms, including Google Search.
Context – Changes to Google search have long led to winners and losers, generating complaints. AI Overviews is just the latest. Google claims that users like the new service, but that the results are again a mixed bag for websites. They argue that some publishers gain more traffic, and that other AI chatbot-builders are providing similar services that are being used like search. Europe now has a robust regulatory regime for Big Tech. Google Search is fully enmeshed. The DSA effort in Italy follows a similar one by German publishers. Publishers have also raised the same concerns with the European Commission in Google’s Digital Markets Act review. And filed traditional antitrust complaints in Brussels and the UK. No legal and regulatory stones are being left unturned. In the US, Penske Media, a publisher that owns sites including Billboard and Rolling Stone, recently filed an antitrust suit in federal court making essentially the same set of claims about Google AI and search. While they hope to build on US District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling that Google has a search monopoly, the judge’s remedies order was limited and focused on the rapid rise of AI chatbots in search and how they may become a competitive mainstay.