Italy’s top newspaper publishers have called on the country’s communications regulator, Agcom, to investigate Google’s AI Overviews, accusing the tech giant of undermining journalism by diverting audiences away from news outlets.

The Federation of Italian Newspaper Publishers (FIEG) said in its formal complaint that the AI-generated summaries, automatically displayed at the top of Google Search results, constitute a “traffic killer” that deprives media outlets of readers, visibility, and revenue.

The group argued that Google’s design effectively prevents users from clicking through to original sources, posing what it called “an existential threat” to independent journalism.

'A systemic risk to democratic information'

In a public statement, FIEG said the system “erodes the economic foundation of journalism” and violates the principles of fairness and competition established under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). The complaint warns that the growing use of AI Overviews and Google’s new AI Mode, which aggregates and summarizes content from multiple outlets, risks turning journalism into “raw material for machine learning systems” without compensation or attribution.

“Italy’s democracy cannot afford a single private company deciding which news citizens see and which they don’t,” FIEG stated, urging immediate intervention from Agcom and the European Commission.

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Sharp traffic declines reported

Recent studies cited by FIEG underscore the impact. Data analytics firm Authoritas found that when AI Overviews appear above search results, the first organic link can lose up to 79% of its clicks. Another study by Ahrefs revealed that the click-through rate on top news results drops by an average of 34.5% when AI Overviews are present.

Analysts have described this as a “zero-click” phenomenon, where users receive answers directly from the search page, never visiting the websites that produce the original information.

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The Italian complaint adds to mounting pressure across Europe. Independent publishers in Germany, France, and Spain have already filed antitrust complaints with the European Commission, alleging that Google’s integration of AI Overviews constitutes an abuse of its dominant market position.

The European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA) is coordinating similar actions, calling for structural remedies such as mandatory transparency over how content is sourced and an opt-out mechanism for publishers.

Google has rejected claims that its AI features harm the media ecosystem. In statements to Reuters and other outlets, the company said that its new search tools continue to drive valuable traffic to publishers.

However, the tech giant has not provided public data to substantiate those claims. Industry observers note that the company’s growing use of AI-generated summaries could soon make traditional news searches obsolete, shifting global information flows into closed, proprietary systems controlled by major platforms.

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