French publishers take Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode to the European Commission

Five French publishing organisations filed a complaint with the European Commission on 29 October over Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. The FNPS announced it on 30 October, naming its partners: the CPA (a digital marketing collective), GESTE (online content and service publishers), SEPM (magazine publishers) and SPIIL (independent online news). The FNPS itself represents the specialist press. Journal du Net reported the filing the evening before.

What they object to

According to the FNPS, AI Overviews and AI Mode have been live in France since 22 July 2026 and answer searches directly from web content, much of it from news sites. The groups say this is likely to cut visits to the original sites, and with them traffic and visibility. They also point to a lack of transparency about how their content is used and their limited ability to control that use. The five plan to hand the Commission documents and observations collected from publishers since the launch, and say the late French rollout, almost two years after other markets, let them draw on experience from abroad.

Those are the complainants’ concerns. The release gives no traffic or revenue figures, and we did not find a Google response.

Where it goes

The filing does not start a new case on its own. The publishers want it added to the formal investigation the Commission opened in December 2025 into Google’s use of publisher and YouTube content for its AI services. They are asking Brussels to treat the French evidence as part of that probe. That probe looks at the terms on which Google uses this content and whether the practice favours Google’s own services over publishers’.

It joins a crowded field of fights over news content and AI, from USA Today’s copyright suit against OpenAI to Wikimedia’s line between training and RAG. It also echoes the complaint UK publishers made about Meta’s new crawl-and-train terms, which raised a similar question of control.

Why this matters

Part of the complaint is about control: publishers say they have little say over how their pages feed AI answers. If the Commission ends up requiring clearer terms or controls, anyone who publishes on the web could benefit, not just French newsrooms. For now this is a complaint feeding an open investigation, with no deadline published, so nothing changes for site owners yet.