According to Mashable, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust probe on Tuesday into Google’s use of online publishers’ content for AI tools like AI Overviews and AI Mode. The investigation will examine if Google imposed unfair terms on publishers or granted itself privileged access to content, disadvantaging rival AI developers. Specifically, the EU will dig into whether Google used web publisher material for these AI summaries without appropriate compensation or an option for publishers to refuse. Since AI Overviews launched in May 2024, sites like the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have seen organic search traffic decline, with a Bloomberg report noting some smaller sites have shut down. In the UK, DMG Media reported an 89 percent drop in click-through rates due to AI Overviews, and a July 2025 Pew Research study found users are less likely to click links when an AI summary appears.
The stakes for publishers are existential
Look, this isn’t just some regulatory squabble. This is about survival for a lot of media. The numbers are brutal—an 89% drop in clicks? That’s not a dip; that’s an extinction-level event for businesses built on ad revenue. Google‘s AI is basically digesting the work of journalists and publishers and serving it up directly in the search results. Why would anyone click through? The value of that content, for the people who actually made it, evaporates instantly. And here’s the thing: Google has access to a vast trove of content, including from YouTube, that other AI companies can’t easily get. That’s the “privileged access” the EU is worried about. It’s a massive competitive moat.
This is bigger than just Google
So this EU probe isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s part of a global wave of pushback against how Big Tech trains and deploys AI. OpenAI is facing multiple lawsuits, including one from Mashable’s parent company Ziff Davis, over copyright infringement for AI training. The EU itself just fined Apple, Meta, and X hundreds of millions under its Digital Services Act. This Google investigation feels like the next logical front in that war: the aggregation and real-time use of copyrighted content, not just the initial training. The core legal question is becoming unavoidable: what constitutes fair use when the AI’s output directly replaces the need to visit the source?
What happens next and who wins?
The EU says there’s “no legal deadline,” which means this will be a long, complex slog. But the potential outcome is fascinating. Could it force Google to create a massive licensing framework, paying publishers for the snippets used in AI Overviews? That would fundamentally change the economics of both search and publishing. For users, the short-term convenience of getting an answer without clicking is clear. But long-term, if the sources of that information go bankrupt, what happens to the quality and reliability of the answers? You can’t summarize reporting that never gets funded in the first place. It’s a classic tragedy of the commons in digital form.
The broader tech reckoning
Basically, we’re watching the regulatory and legal system play catch-up with AI’s disruptive speed. For years, the “move fast and break things” model applied to software and apps. Now it’s applying to the very fabric of the information ecosystem. The Pew research and SEO analyst reports prove the disruption is real and measurable. The EU’s move signals that the era of unilateral data scraping and repurposing for commercial AI might be ending. Whether that leads to a more sustainable model or just a protracted legal mess is the billion-euro question. One thing’s for sure: the free lunch for AI companies is officially being questioned by the head waiter.
