BRUSSELS, Dec 9, 2025 (Reuters) – The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Alphabet’s Google over its use of publishers’ online content and YouTube videos to train its generative AI models, including those powering AI Overviews and the Gemini family.
EU competition enforcers said preliminary findings suggest Google systematically scraped vast amounts of third-party web content and YouTube footage without offering publishers meaningful opt-out mechanisms or adequate compensation. The probe focuses on whether these practices distort competition in the digital publishing and AI markets and breach the bloc’s strict rules on fair trading.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy, stated: “Creators and publishers invest heavily to produce quality content. They must have a real choice and receive fair value when their work trains the world’s most powerful AI systems.”
If Google is found to have abused its dominant position, it faces fines of up to 10% of its annual global turnover — potentially exceeding $30 billion based on 2024 figures — plus behavioral remedies such as mandatory licensing deals or full opt-out tools.
The investigation is the EU’s fourth major antitrust case against Google in eight years and the first to directly targeting generative AI practices. Google responded: “We provide clear opt-out signals and have licensing agreements with many publishers. We will cooperate fully with the Commission.”