Google’s relationship with online publishers has always been one of vulnerability, but with the ascendancy of AI-driven search, the equilibrium is shifting—and not in the favor of publishers. As Google introduces more features such as AI Overviews, publishers are facing diminishing control over the way their content is utilized, and what little is left for them to do is hardly comforting.
Here’s a closer examination of what’s occurring, why it’s significant, and how it may transform the digital ecosystem.
Mounting Antitrust Pressure
The U.S. government is not only monitoring Google—it’s getting ready to act. In one of the boldest antitrust cases ever, the Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general are weighing action that might compel Google to spin off its most important pieces of business, including Chrome or Android. They’re also looking at whether to compel Google to share its search data and artificial intelligence models with rivals.
The objective? To keep Google from leveraging its search dominance to lock in an even tighter grip on the AI arena. One of the prime targets: how Google is employing publisher content to power its AI features—oftentimes without affording publishers much input on the matter.
Inside Google’s Playbook: Control the Narrative, Limit the Options
Internal Google memos, made public during the current antitrust trial, illuminated the degree to which the company delicately developed its strategy for publisher material and AI. Based on testimony from Google Search executive Chetna Bindra, the firm considered how much control it should cede to publishers—namely, whether they could opt out of AI Overviews while still showing up in regular search results.
That choice was not selected.
Instead, the company gravitated toward policies that provided what some within Google referred to as an “illusion of choice.” Publishers could technically exclude their content from use in AI Overviews, but only by also opting out of Google Search altogether. In other words, it was either or nothing.
One of the proposals that would have allowed publishers to prevent their content from being used as a reference by AI features in real time, but not necessarily prevent it from being used for training AI, was a “hard red line.” Another, a proposal described as “unstable,” would have enabled publishers to control how and when their content was used. Google ultimately rejected both.
With unparalleled access to real-time search information, Google has a huge advantage in building AI products—one that challengers such as OpenAI or Perplexity can’t readily duplicate.
Publishers Have a Harsh Decision: Visibility or Control
This isn’t a technical argument—it’s about actual traffic, revenue, and survival.
AI Overviews provide summaries on the search page, so users are quite frequently provided with the answer they seek without ever having to click through to the source. Internal Google studies reported by Press Gazette found that even small restrictions on content previews reduced traffic to news sites by 45%.
That leaves publishers with a bleak choice: let Google use their content in AI Overviews or ban Googlebot outright and vanish from the world’s most widely used search engine.
Matt Rogerson of the Financial Times succinctly put it this way: publishers are being required to make an “unenviable choice”—cede content control or lose audience reach.
Quiet Updates, Minimal Transparency
Google’s internal approach wasn’t only about constraining choices—it also emphasized stealth. When AI Overviews rolled out, Google quietly updated its publisher guidance behind the scenes without any official announcement. The purpose was to prevent raising an eyebrow over the way AI Overviews applied content and the differences between AI training, grounding, and presentation.
“Do what we say, say what we do—but carefully,” Bindra was quoted by The Verge.
While Google directed publishers to mechanisms such as the NOSNIPPET meta tag to keep some content from being included in AI Overviews, that doesn’t prevent their data from being used for training AI models. And even opting out of training via Google-Extended won’t exclude content from being included in AI Overviews—except when the site is fully taken out of Google’s index.
Industry Response and What Comes Next
The exposés have stoked industry-wide concern around the globe. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has opened up its probe into Google’s search power and how it impacts media and content producers.
Google itself argues that AI Overviews are leading to more searches and enabling users to find new sources. In a statement to The Verge, a spokesperson for the company said it thinks features like these “surface relevant sites and drive traffic to them.
But for publishers, the effect comes across as more extractive than enabling. With Google’s AI-based tools picking up and condensing content more and more directly in search results, the value that publishers receive in exchange is declining.
The result of this antitrust war could remake not only Google’s business model but the larger dynamics between tech behemoths, AI creators, and the media landscape. Meanwhile, publishers are asked to decide between reach and autonomy, and the costs of that choice are far from trivial.
