The UK Just Said No to Google's AI News Grab. Who's Next?

Martha Dark is co-executive director at Foxglove, a tech justice non-profit that has coordinated regulatory complaints in multiple jurisdictions challenging Google's handling of news content in AI products.

Last week, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) delivered a landmark decision that will help determine whether independent journalism survives the AI era.

The regulator announced that Google must give news publishers a meaningful way to stop their reporting being used in AI products and AI-generated summaries: an opt out, without sacrificing their visibility in Google’s search results.

To understand why this was needed, we have to look at the historic relationship between the creators of news — journalists — and Google, the infamous “first page” of the internet and ultimate controller of most people’s access to the news through its 90% monopoly share of online search. For more than two decades, search engines and Google operated under a simple bargain. Publishers created content. Google helped readers find it. Publishers received traffic, subscriptions, and advertising revenue in return.

Google's introduction of AI Overviews in 2024 broke that bargain. Instead of the list of familiar blue links that previously sat at the top of Google’s search page, the new AI Overviews used the content of those links — effectively the actual news reporting — to create a summary, while pushing down and out of sight the links from which it was scraped.

This is what The Verge’s Nilay Patel calls “Google Zero.” Google scrapes the internet for content, without paying, then reassembles it on its own site, so users never leave. Readers get the news without visiting the source that reported it. And until now, if anyone did choose to opt out of being scraped for AI Overviews, Google would only let you do that by also crippling your presence in Search. So in effect, say no and Google forces you off Search.

Nice news website you have there. Be a shame if someone de-listed it.

Publishers faced an impossible choice: allow Google to steal and repurpose their work for AI systems without payment and eventually go out of business, or object, disappear from the internet and probably go out of business even faster.

The CMA has now rightly recognized that this is no choice at all and ordered Google to allow news publishers to opt out — without being removed from the internet entirely.

The CMA’s decision is a major victory for everyone who depends on a healthy, independent press — one of the bedrocks of a functioning democracy and an open, free society. It also vindicates complaints brought by my organization Foxglove, and our partners, who have spent the last year arguing Google has abused its dominance and forced publishers into an unfair bargain.

But this is not just a British story. Google behaves this way around the world.

The search giant is under investigation in Europe and Brazil, following complaints filed by Foxglove and partners. In the past 12 months, both the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) and Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) opened investigations into Google's use of news content in AI products. The CMA's decision should give them confidence to move quickly toward the same conclusion.

The future of independent journalism depends on it, because our research shows Google’s mafia-like tactics with AI Overviews have resulted in a devastating drop in income for news publishers, while Google continues to make record profits.

Without income, news publishers fire reporters and shutter newsrooms. That’s bad for the value of good public information, bad for the ability of all of us to know both what’s happening at the bottom of our road and around the world, and bad for democracy most of all.

This is exactly the kind of problem competition law and regulators exist to address.

When a company like Google — with more money, power and influence than many nation states —can impose terms that publishers cannot realistically reject, regulators have a duty to intervene. The CMA has now done so. Its remedy is straightforward: publishers must be able to refuse AI use of their content without being penalized.

That principle should not stop at Britain's borders. Foxglove and our partners will continue to make the case in the EU, in Brazil, and elsewhere that this meaningful and permanent opt out must apply across the world.

The work here in Britain is not finished either. We still have concerns that implementation of the new UK rules is not happening quickly enough to protect our small and independent news industry. We will also be keeping a keen eye on Google’s compliance with the new rules — and what enforcement may be required to force them to respect the law.

Nevertheless, make no mistake: the CMA's decision is a momentous step forward. It establishes a simple but important principle: publishers deserve meaningful control over whether their work is used to power AI systems. And no single company, no matter how big or powerful, gets to control the news right across our planet.

This month it is 1:0 to the regulators taking on Big Tech. This issue won’t be solved by one regulator acting alone. The task now is to make sure it does not remain an isolated success.

The UK has shown intervention is possible. Now other regulators must act.