Google has made AI Mode the default. Brussels and London are now testing whether publishers can refuse.

Global Google search referrals to publishers fell by a third in the year to November 2025, and Google Discover referrals fell 21 per cent. Press Gazette reported the figures on 12 January 2026, drawing on Chartbeat data published in the Reuters Institute's Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026 report. In the United States the same data put organic Google search referrals down 38 per cent year on year and Discover down 29 per cent.

Nothing has replaced that traffic. The same Press Gazette report put ChatGPT at 0.02 per cent of total referral traffic to publishers and Perplexity at 0.002 per cent. The media leaders surveyed for the Reuters Institute report expected a further decline averaging 43 per cent over the following three years.

The loss is not evenly spread. Search Engine Land reported on 18 March 2026, citing Chartbeat, that sites drawing 1,000 to 10,000 daily pageviews had lost 60 per cent of their search referral traffic over two years, that sites in the 10,000 to 100,000 band were down 47 per cent, and that publishers above 100,000 daily pageviews were down 22 per cent. Across the sample, Google Search pageviews fell 34 per cent year on year. The smaller the newsroom, the larger the hole.

Google, meanwhile, has stopped treating AI Mode as an experiment. In a post on 19 May 2026, the company said Gemini 3.5 Flash had become "the new default model in AI Mode for everyone globally" and described the accompanying change as "the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years". The same post says users "will continue to get a range of results from Search, just like you do today".

Regulators have moved faster than the courts. TechCrunch reported that the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation on 9 December 2025 into Google's use of publisher and YouTube material in its AI search features. The Commission said it would examine the extent to which AI Overviews and AI Mode are "based on web publishers' content without appropriate compensation for that, and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search". A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch the investigation "risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever".

Britain has gone further than investigating. On 3 June 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority announced a legally binding conduct requirement on Google's UK search services under the digital markets regime, following Google's designation with strategic market status. The CMA requires Google to let publishers opt out of having their content used to power AI features such as AI Overviews, to allow a separate opt out from use in AI model fine tuning, and to attribute publisher content with clear links in AI generated results. Google has nine months to implement it and must report on compliance every six months in the first year. Sarah Cardell, the CMA's chief executive, called it a world-first requirement on Google's search services in the UK.

The litigation is slower. Penske Media, owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, sued Google in Washington over AI Overviews, and Law360 reported that Google has moved to dismiss the case. It has not been decided.

In Europe the copyright question has reached the top court. The Court of Justice of the European Union heard Like Company v Google Ireland, Case C-250/25, before its Grand Chamber on 10 March 2026, according to the European Copyright Society opinion published by CREATe. The reference from the Budapest Regional Court asks whether a chatbot output that reproduces press content is a communication to the public, whether training is an act of reproduction, and how the text and data mining exception and the press publishers' right in Article 15 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive apply. No judgment has been handed down.

France got to the same place earlier by a different route. The Autorite de la concurrence fined Google 250 million euros on 15 March 2024 for breaching commitments it had given on press publishers' related rights, finding among other things that Google had used content from press publishers and news agencies to train the foundation model of its AI service without informing the publishers or the regulator, and had offered no way to opt out of that training without also losing display on Search and News.

Money is starting to move, on Google's terms. MediaPost reported on 25 June 2026, citing The Information, that Google is asking publishers in a News AI pilot for broader rights, including permission to train its models, and has told some publishers it plans to wind down the older News Showcase programme, with payments directed to participants in the new arrangement. The Washington Post and the Guardian were named among the initial partners.

What is unresolved is whether an opt out is worth anything. A publisher that removes itself from AI Overviews still loses the click if the answer above it satisfies the reader, and the CMA's remedy does not restore the referral, it only restores the choice. Google's UK controls are due within nine months of June 2026. The Commission has not said when its investigation will conclude, the CJEU has not ruled, and the Penske case has not cleared its first motion. Publishers are being asked to negotiate their terms of trade while the leverage they once had, the click, continues to fall.