Britain says no to Google's AI news scraping; who is next?

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled that Google must allow news publishers to choose not to have their reporting used in AI products and AI summaries, without having to sacrifice visibility in search results. Author and Foxglove co-executive director Martha Dark said that after Google launched AI Overviews in 2024, it generated summaries from linked content and pushed the original links to inconspicuous positions; previously, publishers who opted out of AI scraping would also have their search exposure weakened. She said the ruling confirms the complaint filed by Foxglove and partners, and that the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) and Brazil's CADE have opened investigations into Google's use of news content in AI products over the past 12 months. The author remains concerned that the pace of implementing the new UK rules may be insufficient to protect small independent news outlets.