Google's Monopolistic Behavior in Digital News Challenged

TapTechNews June 2nd, the News/MediaAlliance in the US sent a letter to the US Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice this week, urging the two departments to investigate Google's monopolistic behavior in digital news publishing and demanding to stop it from further expanding by using generative AI in its ubiquitous search product.

The focus of the News/MediaAlliance is Google's newly launched 'AIOverviews', and it claims that this feature uses publishers' content without permission to comprehensively respond to users' queries, which has raised concerns.

The agency said that by taking advantage of publishers' proprietary materials, Google not only risks depriving content creators of significant traffic but also undermines the basic integrity of digital news dissemination.

Daniel Cofi, president and CEO of the News/MediaAlliance, warns that Google's 'eckless expansion' behavior will have dire consequences. 'Although ideally, AI companies and news publishers should coexist, Google's coercive strategies have disrupted this delicate balance.' Cofi also said that 90% of users never venture beyond the Google search results page and emphasized that Google's encroachment poses a threat to the survival of publishers.

In the end, the agency concluded that Google's behavior is a 'double-edged sword', which weakens the economic viability of news publishers and also reduces the quality of information available to users. Therefore, the agency emphasized the urgent need for regulatory intervention to stop Google's monopolistic behavior and maintain the vitality of the news ecosystem.

According to TapTechNews' previous report, Google's 'AIOverviews' was officially launched at this year's I/O Developer Conference, mainly allowing users to conduct AI search through questioning and chatting. Google once claimed that this is one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.