The EPC chairman said the complaint is not about limiting innovation but about preventing powerful market players from taking publishers’ content without permission.
Google, a subsidiary of parent company Alphabet, is at the center of a new antitrust complaint opened by the European Publishers Council (EPC) on Tuesday (10 February) and filed with the European Commission.
The complaint alleges that Google and Alphabet are abusing their dominant position in traditional search services by using AI overview and AI mode embedded within Google Search.
There are concerns that Google is using journalistic content without the necessary permissions, diverting traffic, audience and revenue and failing to compensate the original owners of the content.
The complaint said, “By embedding AI-generated summaries and chatbot-style answers directly into the prominent search interface, Google has transformed Search from a referral service into an answer engine that replaces original publisher content and keeps users within the Google ecosystem.
“Google relies on publishers’ high-quality journalistic content as key input for AI training, lead generation, and output generation. Professionally produced news and editorial content is critical to AI programs because it’s accurate, current, well-structured, and requires little cleanup.”
Christian Van Thillo, the chairman of the EPC explained that the complaint is “not against innovation or artificial intelligence”, but rather about ensuring that the prominent key players cannot use their power to take away the publisher’s permission to share content, or their right to compensation.
He believes that if such practices continue then the damage done may be structural and irreparable. “No amount of money can make up for lost audiences, weakened brand relationships, or destroyed reader trust once publishers are cut off.
“Effective competition, pluralism of media, and democratic expression, all ideals at the heart of the European Democracy Shield, depend on timely and decisive implementation.”
The complaint notes that while some AI providers have entered into licensing agreements with publishers regarding the use of journalistic content, Google has largely failed to do so.
The EPC said the platform relies on its control of its search service to secure material without payment, “thereby distorting competition and undermining the emergence of a viable market for licenses for the use of AI for copyrighted works”.
Complainants are of the view that publishers are left with an unacceptable choice. They can remain visible in Google Search and accept that their content is clear, reproducible, and retargeted by Google’s AI features. Or choose an opt-out that may include a loss of search visibility that many publishers cannot afford.
The European Publishers Council calls on the European Commission “to implement remedies capable of restoring competitive conditions, including meaningful control by publishers over the use of their content for AI purposes, transparency about content use and impact, and an appropriate licensing and payment framework that reflects the scale and value of publishers’ content.”
A Google representative responded to the complaint saying, “These inaccurate claims are an attempt to capture the useful AI features that Europeans want. We design our AI features to display great content across the web and provide easy-to-use controls to manage their content.”
The EPC complaint comes in the middle of time ongoing investigation launched by the European Commission in December 2025. The commission opened an antitrust investigation into Google over the content giant’s use of web publishers’ content and content uploaded to YouTube to benefit its artificial intelligence.
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