①The European Commission announced an antitrust investigation into Google on Tuesday; ②The agency said the investigation will examine whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive practices, such as imposing unfair terms on publishers and content creators, or granting itself privileged access to that content.
On Tuesday (December 9) local time, the European Commission announced an antitrust investigation into Google for its use of online content to develop artificial intelligence. (AI) behavior.
The European Commission says Google is using content from online publishers and content uploaded to the online video-sharing platform YouTube to train its AI, and the Commission is investigating whether this violates EU competition regulations.
The agency said the investigation will examine whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive practices, such as imposing unfair terms on publishers and content creators, or giving itself privileged access to such content, actions that could disadvantage competitors’ AI model developers.
Earlier this year, the European Commission reportedly received a legal complaint from publishers regarding Google's AI Overview tool, accusing Google of unfairly diverting traffic away from news websites.
"AI has brought remarkable innovation and numerous benefits to people and businesses across Europe, but this progress cannot come at the expense of the core principles of our society," said Theresa Rivera, the EU's antitrust chief, in a statement on Tuesday.
A Google spokesperson responded on Tuesday, saying the complaint could stifle innovation. "Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies, and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries to help them transition to the AI era," the spokesperson said.
This survey comes as Google makes progress in the AI race, having released the Gemini 3 last month to widespread acclaim and boost its stock price.
EU regulators have recently stepped up their scrutiny of AI services offered by tech companies. Last week, the EU launched a full-scale antitrust investigation into Meta, citing concerns that the AI features the company introduced into WhatsApp could harm competition.
If the European Commission ultimately finds that a company has violated EU antitrust law, the company could face fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue.
As the EU tightens its regulations on tech giants, relations between the EU and the US are becoming increasingly strained.
Last week, the European Union fined Elon Musk's social media platform X €120 million (approximately $140 million). This move has drawn strong backlash from the Trump administration in the United States.
This marks yet another antitrust investigation against Google by the European Union. In September of this year, the EU fined Google nearly €3 billion (approximately US$3.4 billion) for distorting competition and violating antitrust rules in the advertising technology industry.
(Article source: CLS)
