The European Commission is targeting Google once again. Regulators in Brussels have launched a formal antitrust investigation to determine if the tech giant is illegally harvesting content from web publishers and YouTube creators to power its AI services.
The core suspicion is that Google is exploiting its dominant market position to force unfair terms on publishers and creators. According to the Commission's press release, the investigation also examines whether Google gives its own AI models privileged access to training data, effectively walling off competitors.
"A free and democratic society depends on diverse media, open access to information, and a vibrant creative landscape. These values are central to who we are as Europeans," said Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice President of the Commission. "AI is bringing remarkable innovation and many benefits for people and businesses across Europe, but this progress cannot come at the expense of the principles at the heart of our societies. This is why we are investigating whether Google may have imposed unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, while placing rival AI models developers at a disadvantage, in breach of EU competition rules."
Google's "all or nothing" ultimatum
The investigation centers on Google's "AI Overviews" and "AI Mode." The former places AI-generated summaries above traditional search results, while the latter functions as a conversational chatbot.
The Commission takes issue with how Google uses publisher content for these services without compensation. More critically, publishers reportedly lack a viable choice in the matter. Blocking Google's AI scraper effectively means disappearing from Google Search entirely—an existential threat for media outlets that depend on search traffic to survive.
Monopolizing YouTube data
Investigators are also scrutinizing YouTube. The accusation is that Google trains its models on user-uploaded videos without paying creators or offering them a way to opt out.
To use the platform, creators must grant Google extensive usage rights, including for AI training. If they refuse, they cannot upload. Crucially, while Google grants itself unrestricted access to this data, its platform guidelines specifically prohibit competing AI developers from doing the same. This double standard could constitute a breach of Article 102 of the EU Treaty, which prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.
It's worth noting that YouTube rolled out settings late last year that let some creators decide whether third-party AI companies can use their videos for model training. However, these controls don't appear to apply to Google's own AI training practices—a distinction that likely matters to EU regulators.
The media industry's prisoner's dilemma
The dependence of content providers on Big Tech looks like a calculated strategy. By cutting exclusive licensing deals with a handful of major publishers, companies like Google and OpenAI lock in the data they need while legitimizing their business models.
This dynamic creates a prisoner's dilemma for smaller players. Once the system is in place, they're forced to hand over their content just to remain visible in AI-generated responses. Over time, this lets Google and other platform providers dictate terms, a pattern that played out before with the rise of web search.
Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has called these payments from Big Tech hush money, arguing they're designed to head off copyright lawsuits rather than build sustainable business models for news.
