AI law and the newsroom, October 29–November 3: five French publisher groups take Google's AI summaries to Brussels, and Britain's AI click-data deadline is 3 December

This issue carries two items, dated 29 October and 2 November 2026, that the issues published earlier today did not reach. The first is a complaint lodged in Brussels against Google's AI summaries. The second is a statement from Google about the data British rules will require from it on 3 December.

Two questions run through both. Who decides whether an AI answer may stand in for the article? And what is a publisher shown about what that answer took from its work?

The complaint is dated Paris, 29 October 2026, and five French organisations of web publishers signed it. 1

The signatories speak for different parts of the French publishing world. The CPA represents digital marketing businesses, and the FNPS the specialised news press. GESTE covers online content and service publishers, the SEPM magazine publishers, and the SPIIL independent online news publishers. 1

Together the five call themselves the largest coalition of French publisher bodies ever brought before the European competition authority. 1

What they object to is the terms on which the features arrived. Google deployed AI Overviews and AI Mode in France on 22 July 2026. 1 The five organisations describe that deployment as unilateral, carried out "without any consultation". 1

In their account, the answers are generated from publishers' content and can replace the visit to the site that produced it. 1 They add that the arrangement gave publishers no sight of how their content was used, and no control over it. 1

They ask the Commission to examine three consequences: the effect on competition, the effect on a publisher's ability to control how its content is exploited, and the effect on whether its digital business can last. 1 Relief sought: that examination, inside the case already open. The release states no monetary claim. 1

Brussels already has a case on this subject. The Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Google's use of publisher content on 9 December 2025. 2 It runs under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement, as case AT.40983. 23

The stated concern covers two kinds of content. One is web publishers' content used to generate AI Overviews and AI Mode, which the Commission says may have been used without appropriate compensation and without a way to refuse that preserved access to Search. 2 The other is video and other content uploaded to YouTube, used to train Google's models while YouTube's own policies bar rival developers from that material. 2

The five organisations describe their complaint as following on from that investigation, and as a way of adding evidence to it. 1 The register records the opening decision of 9 December 2025 and nothing after it. 3 The complaint's contents are therefore known from what the five published, since the Commission does not publish complaints. 1

Who must comply: nobody yet. A complaint asks the Commission to act, and creates no duty on Google or on a newsroom. 2 The Commission decides whether and how to take the case further, and its own note records that an antitrust investigation has no legal deadline. 2

The second item is binding, and it has a date on it. On 3 June 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority imposed a conduct requirement on Google for its general search services. 4 It was the first conduct requirement the authority has imposed under the new digital markets regime. 5 It followed the designation of Google as having strategic market status in general search on 10 October 2025. 4

Paragraph 7 is the part that matters here. It obliges Google to give publishers "clear and detailed metrics on user engagement with their Search Content where it is used in its search generative AI features". 4 Search Content means publisher content collected through Googlebot or any crawler doing the same job for general search. 4

The requirement comes into force six months after the notice, which fixes it at 3 December 2026. 4 One paragraph waits longer: the page-level control in paragraph 4(b) comes into force after nine months, on 3 March 2027. 4 The duties cover outputs shown to anyone located in the United Kingdom. 4

The authority's interpretative notes say what the data must contain. 6

Three things are listed. Impressions of the publisher's content inside an AI feature, including where it was attributed. Click-throughs to the publisher's site from links in those features, in a form that lets the publisher identify the clicks and judge their quality. And a click-through rate, calculated as clicks divided by impressions inside the feature. 6

Three delivery conditions follow. The data must be disaggregated for each publisher. 6 It must be fully separated from organic results, and from search features other than the AI ones. 6 And it must arrive through a commonly accessible platform such as Google Search Console. 6 Google can comply by another route if it shows the authority that the route meets the requirement. 6

Today's picture is thinner. Google's generative AI performance report, extended to all sites on 31 August 2026, gives impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, date and device. 7 Clicks that begin inside an AI feature appear in the ordinary performance report instead, counted among all web results. 8

On 2 November a Google engineer answered the question the British date makes urgent. 8 Gary Illyes, who works on Google Search, replied on LinkedIn to a post that credited unnamed Google staff with news about click and query data: "I don't think we've phrased it like this. The team is super interested in giving more data, data that makes sense, but we don't have anything to announce yet." 8

What a newsroom does with the date is short work. Look for the AI figures after 3 December. If the click data is still missing, say so to the authority, which invites comments at searchsms@cma.gov.uk or through a trade association. 5

Google's first compliance report covers 3 June to 3 December 2026 and falls due on 3 January 2027. 9 The authority says it expects to require a published summary or non-confidential version of each report. 9

Side by side, the two items differ in the way a newsroom's calendar cares about. Britain imposes a duty on Google, with a date and a compliance report behind it. Brussels adds evidence to a case that already exists, and the Commission's decision in that case is undated. 3

Brussels has no clock attached to this. The complaint sets no deadline, and the register for AT.40983 is where a statement of objections or a set of commitments would appear first. 3

London has one, four weeks out. The open question is whether Google ships the metrics by 3 December, and whether the authority accepts some other route to the same numbers. 6

The nearest date asks nothing of a newsroom except attention: the Commission's copyright consultation closes on 10 November. 10