The Competition Board decided to open an investigation into Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode features offered through its search services. During the preliminary inquiry, it assessed how those features change the way users access information and whether that change may adversely affect traffic directed to news publishers and other content creators. The Board found the preliminary findings sufficient to warrant a fuller examination.
The investigation will also examine the terms in agreements signed between Google and news publishers on the use of content. The Competition Board will assess whether those terms constitute unfair contractual conditions and whether AI Overviews and AI Mode have exclusionary effects on news publishers, other content creators and AI chat assistants.
Another part of the inquiry will address whether different practices were applied in selecting publishers’ content as sources for Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, or in agreements concerning the licensing of that content. The Board said the existing indications of conduct described as “discriminatory and exploitative” with respect to news publishers had reached the level of strong suspicion.
Alongside the investigation, the Board decided to impose an interim measure on Google. Under the measure, Google is expected to establish conditions that do not create discrimination among news publishers and that reflect the economic value of content use. Publishers must also be able to exercise their choices concerning the use of content in AI services independently of visibility and indexing in Google’s other services.
Opening an investigation under competition law does not mean that the undertaking under review has been found to have violated the law. The Competition Board will make its final assessment after considering the information and documents collected during the investigation and the parties’ defenses.
