Tech Policy Press - UK Regulator Staunches Google’s AI Content Grab
CMDG director Dr. Courtney Radch argues that Google’s AI search features amount to a content grab unless publishers can refuse AI use without losing visibility in regular search. The piece frames the UK CMA’s move as an important check on Google’s power because it separates access to search from consent to AI reuse, giving publishers more control over whether their work is used to generate AI answers.
On Wednesday, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a binding conduct requirement forcing Google to give publishers real control over whether their content powers AI-generated search summaries. Under the new rules, publishers can opt out of having their content used in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and broader generative AI services at both directory and page level. Google must also attribute publisher content with clear links in AI-generated results and submit compliance reports every six months. And critically, the CMA adopted one of the key provisions the center I run has been advocating for—a No Retaliation rule, meaning that Google cannot downrank or penalize publishers in general search results for opting out of the AI features.
These requirements, though they will not be mandated for implementation immediately, are already having ramifications for publishers around the world. Google has indicated it will begin testing new controls for a subset of website owners before a global rollout—which means today’s decision has implications for publishers everywhere.
Our Center for Media and Digital Governance was at the forefront of urging the CMA to make publisher remedies an early enforcement priority, not something deferred to a later phase when AI markets will have consolidated further around business models built on the uncompensated extraction of journalistic value. And apparently that argument landed, because publisher protections are among the first conduct requirements being imposed rather than being relegated to a later stage or an afterthought. As I said in our statement, “For too long, dominant digital platforms have been permitted to extract value from journalism while weakening the economic foundations of the organizations that produce it.”
The CMA acted under the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which designated Google with strategic market status in October 2025, recognizing that it controls over 90% of UK general search queries and other market dynamics that we highlighted in our submission to the consultation. The publisher conduct requirement is the first such requirement imposed on Google, and CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell was explicit that more is coming (hopefully—the CMA has the opportunity to adopt bold solutions).
One of the core underlying problems is one we have been documenting for years and is tied to Google’s illegal (in the US at least) monopoly of search and ability to tie this dominance to other products like AI: publishers must allow Google’s crawler to access their content to appear in search results. That same crawled content now powers AI Overviews that reduce traffic back to those publishers—what the CMA aptly calls compelled consent. When AI Overviews appear in a search, the click-through rates plummet, making it impossible to duel digital advertising, monetize audiences through subscriptions or memberships, or cultivate brand awareness, undermining the economic rationale for producing the content Google’s AI depends on.
Read full article here.