Publishers Push Back as Google AI Threatens Journalism's Future

The standoff between the European press and Google has reached a new level. On February 10, 2026, the European Publishers Council filed an official complaint with the European Union authorities. It accuses the American giant of mining press articles to train its artificial intelligence tools, without ever asking for permission, and without paying a single cent to the newsrooms concerned.

Google AI silently sucks up journalism

On February 10, 2026, the European Publishers Council filed an official complaint against Google with the European Union authorities. Indeed, the organization, which represents hundreds of media across the continent, contests the display of automatically generated AI summaries at the top of search results pages. 

These summaries feed on press articles written by journalists — without prior agreement, and without any financial compensation for the newsrooms.

Christian Van Thillo, president of the Council, does not mince words. For him, it is a pure and simple confiscation of journalistic work. 

This is about preventing a dominant player from abusing its market power to appropriate publisher content without their consent, without fair compensation, he declared in a statement.

For years, publishers and Google coexisted in a fragile but functional balance: Google directed readers to news sites, and media provided it with quality content. AI previews break this pact. Fewer clicks, fewer visitors, less advertising revenue.

The figures speak volumes. According to an analysis by Debug Lies, Google’s AI previews have reduced publishers’ traffic by 33% worldwide since their deployment.

An impossible dilemma, a European investigation in ambush

Google does not intend to give ground. A company spokesperson responded that the complaint was aimed notably at “slowing down the development of new useful AI features that Europeans want.”

The firm also claims to offer tools allowing sites to disable these features. However, publishers reject this argument.

The reasoning is clear: withdrawing from AI previews also means losing visibility in traditional search results. In other words, media face a tough choice: either they accept that their work feeds Google’s AI for free, or they become invisible to internet users. Two options, no favorable outcome.

This complaint comes at the perfect time for regulators. The European Commission had already opened an investigation in December 2025 into search engine practices. In February 2026, Teresa Ribera, EU Executive Vice-President, mentioned emergency measures to limit damage to the media sector, without waiting for the investigation’s conclusion.

If authorities side with the publishers, Google could be forced to deploy an automated compensation system. A mechanism that would draw inspiration from the 2019 European copyright directive — but on a much larger scale.

In short, this case goes far beyond a simple dispute between a tech giant and newsrooms. It raises a fundamental question for the future of the web: who pays when an artificial intelligence feeds on human work? The European decision could set a global precedent. And for independent media, it may be their last chance to have a say in this debate before it’s too late.