A French David taking on an American Goliath? Let's hope it ends the same way.
A federation representing nearly 300 French newspapers announced on Tuesday that it has filed a complaint with the Competition Authority over Google's new AI-generated search result summaries.
This is the latest move by media companies against the way the US tech giant uses their articles and other content, at a time when they are facing a fall in advertising revenue.
Google rolled out its "AI Overviews" in France at the end of July. These AI-generated snapshots appear above the usual links to search results and compile information drawn from a wide range of sources.
Media organisations fear this feature will discourage users from clicking on their links, having already obtained an answer to their question from the American giant's AI. That would deprive them of their usual traffic and the advertising income that goes with it.
However, the APIG (General Information Press Alliance) wants (source in French) the French competition regulator to ensure "respect by Google of the commitments made in 2022" under a compensation agreement reached with French media groups, because "the unilateral rollout of new uses of press content, without prior authorisation or dedicated payment, flies in the face of those commitments".
France's audiovisual and digital regulator, Arcom, has "estimated the loss of traffic attributable to AI-generated summaries at between 33% and 38%", the APIG points out.
"Information has considerable value," said Marc Feuillée, president of APIG and chief executive of Le Figaro, in a statement.
"Publishers are not asking for innovation to stop. They are asking for this value to be shared and for the use of their work to be paid for, as the law requires," the association said in its statement.
"Publishers are ready to feed and support these new uses, within a balanced framework based on negotiated authorisation and payment commensurate with the value their content helps to create," APIG insists.
The alliance says Google introduced these new AI-generated summaries without its consent, which it argues amounts to a breach of the 2022 agreement.
In France, Google reached agreements in 2022 with 450 press publishers on "neighbouring rights" under copyright law, which allow newspapers, magazines and news agencies to be paid when their content is used by tech giants.
The Competition Authority had already fined Google 250 million euros (290 million dollars) in 2024 for failing to comply with certain provisions of that agreement.
Media revenues in free fall
Many media groups have seen their income shrink over the past two decades as advertising has moved online, a space where tech companies capture a large share of the profits.
Critics argue that AI summaries make matters worse by driving down web traffic to news articles, with many users no longer clicking through to the original source of the information.
RelatedGoogle, for its part, says these tools allow users to ask more complex questions and discover new content, while insisting it offers publishers ways to control how their material is handled.
The EU announced in December 2025 that it was opening an investigation to determine whether Google has broken competition rules by using content posted online by media and other publishers to train and deliver AI services without paying appropriate compensation.
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