Google’s AI Under Siege: Huge EU Probe Launched

Laptop on Google homepage, person reading a book.

The European Union just fired its biggest antitrust weapon at Google’s artificial intelligence empire, targeting the tech giant’s use of publishers’ content and YouTube videos to power AI systems that may be strangling the very sources they depend on.

Story Highlights

EU launches formal antitrust investigation into Google’s AI Overviews and YouTube content usage for AI training
Google faces potential fines up to 10% of global annual revenue if found guilty of abusing market dominance
Publishers claim Google broke the internet’s foundational bargain by replacing traffic-driving links with AI-generated answers
Investigation examines whether Google blocks rival AI companies from accessing YouTube training data
Case represents broader battle over who captures value from online content in the AI era

The Digital Parasitism Problem

Google’s AI Overviews sit atop search results like digital vampires, sucking the substance from publishers’ work while offering sanitized summaries that keep users from clicking through to original sources. The European Commission’s December 9th investigation targets this practice as potential abuse of Google’s search dominance, where the company allegedly extracts value from content creators without fair compensation or genuine opt-out options.

Teresa Ribera, the EU’s antitrust chief, frames this as protecting democracy itself. Publishers need sustainable revenue streams to produce quality journalism, but Google’s AI features potentially destroy the click-through traffic that funds newsrooms. The investigation will determine whether Google’s gatekeeping power makes any publisher “choice” to refuse AI usage essentially meaningless.

YouTube’s Walled Garden Advantage

Beyond search, the investigation scrutinizes Google’s exclusive access to YouTube’s vast video library for AI training. While rival AI companies face API restrictions and terms-of-service barriers, Google freely mines YouTube content to train multimodal AI systems that combine video, audio, and text understanding. This creates what competitors argue is an insurmountable data advantage in the AI arms race.

The commission will examine whether Google imposed unfair terms on YouTube creators whose content powers AI development, and whether blocking rival access to this training data constitutes anticompetitive behavior. For AI startups trying to compete with Google’s Gemini, YouTube’s closed ecosystem represents both the prize they cannot reach and the moat protecting Google’s AI dominance.

Publishers Fight for Digital Survival

Tim Cowen, representing publisher groups including the Independent Publishers Alliance, calls Google’s Gemini AI “Search’s evil twin.” His coalition argues Google violated the internet’s fundamental bargain where search engines index content in exchange for driving traffic. Instead, AI Overviews capture user attention while publishers watch their visitor numbers plummet.

Google faces EU antitrust investigation over AI Overviews, YouTube https://t.co/PyhEmnQmvZ pic.twitter.com/TnauoQCnlw

— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) December 9, 2025

The Movement for an Open Web and similar organizations pushed complaints that triggered this investigation after Google rejected their concerns in July 2025. They demand not just opt-out mechanisms, which would effectively banish them from search visibility, but genuine compensation for AI training usage and fair terms that preserve their business models.

Stakes Beyond European Borders

Google dismisses the complaints as innovation-stifling, arguing the market for online content and AI remains “more competitive than ever.” The company faces a familiar EU playbook that previously resulted in multi-billion dollar fines over Google Shopping self-preferencing and Android bundling practices. However, this AI investigation carries potentially transformative remedies that could reshape how tech giants monetize online content globally.

If the commission finds abuse, Google could face structural changes to AI Overviews, mandatory content licensing schemes, or requirements to open YouTube data to competitors on fair terms. Such precedents would ripple across Silicon Valley, affecting every company building AI systems on web-scraped content. The outcome may determine whether AI development becomes a winner-take-all game for incumbents with exclusive data access, or whether competition and creator compensation can coexist with artificial intelligence innovation.