News Media Europe (NME), representing more than 2,700 European news brands, strongly welcomes the European Commission’s decision to open a formal investigation into whether Google has breached EU competition rules by using publishers’ content and YouTube creators’ material for AI services such as AI Overviews and AI Mode without appropriate compensation or a genuine possibility to refuse.

For Europe’s independent news publishers, AI-mediated “answer engines” risk accelerating the shift from open discovery to closed ecosystems, where users receive AI-generated summaries instead of visiting original news sources, undermining traffic, advertising revenues, subscriptions and long-term audience relationships. Early evidence already shows that AI layers like AI Overviews and AI Mode can dramatically suppress click-through rates to publishers’ sites, raising serious concerns for media sustainability and for citizens’ access to pluralistic, diverse and high-quality news.

NME is particularly concerned that Google’s generative AI models and services are built on the creative and editorial work of European publishers without proper authorisation and fair remuneration. At the same time, Google’s AI interfaces risk self-preferencing the company’s own and affiliated services, keeping users and advertising revenues inside its ecosystem in ways that may breach EU competition and Digital Markets Act rules.

Call for robust enforcement and publisher involvement

News Media Europe supports the Commission’s decision to treat this case as a priority and stands ready to contribute evidence and expertise to ensure that the investigation fully captures the impact of AI Overviews, AI Mode and related tools on news publishers and media pluralism in Europe. NME calls on EU institutions and national authorities to ensure that any outcome delivers enforceable safeguards: explicit consent and fair remuneration for the use of news content in AI, and strict limits on self-preferencing and discriminatory ranking.

Contact: Wout van Wijk