Turkish Competition Authority issues interim measure on Google's artificial intelligence (AI) search results
Traffic to news websites plummeted following the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) summaries. The Turkish Competition Authority launched an investigation and issued an interim decision on the grounds that AI previews offered by Google in search results negatively affect publisher traffic and create unfair contract terms.
Google has severely impacted the traffic of hundreds of thousands of news sites over the past few years. Particularly in Turkey, many news channels laid off staff in their digital services. Some channels even decided to close down.
Google's algorithm updates were previously brought to the agenda. Now a development regarding this has occurred, and the Competition Board imposed interim measures on Google's artificial intelligence (AI) search results.
INTERIM MEASURE DECISION FOR GOOGLE
The Competition Board launched an investigation to determine whether Google's artificial intelligence (AI) overviews and artificial intelligence (AI) mode features offered through its search engine violate competition law. The Board ruled to implement interim measures against the company to prevent irreparable harm during the investigation process.
Google companies within the scope of the investigation
According to the decision published on the official website of the Competition Authority, the investigation covers the economic entity consisting of Alphabet Inc., Google Ireland Limited, Google LLC, Google International LLC, and Google Reklamcılık ve Pazarlama Ltd. Şti. The investigation aims to determine the market impact of artificial intelligence (AI)-based summarization tools within the search services offered by the company.
Publisher traffic and unfair contract investigation
Two main areas were examined during the preliminary investigation process. First, how artificial intelligence (AI) overviews and artificial intelligence (AI) mode features changed users' habits of accessing information was analyzed. It was evaluated whether these technologies negatively affected visitor traffic to news publishers and websites producing online content.
In the second stage, content licensing agreements between Google and news organizations were investigated. The examination included the following elements:
- Whether the terms in the agreements constituted unfair conditions,
- Whether artificial intelligence (AI) features created a market-foreclosing effect on publishers, content creators, and competing artificial intelligence (AI) chat assistants,
- Whether discrimination occurred among publishers in selecting sources and licensing news content for artificial intelligence (AI) responses.
Grounds and conditions of the interim measure decision
The Competition Board stated that indications of discriminatory and exploitative behavior against news publishers reached a strong level of suspicion. Following this finding, the relevant legal article was applied, and interim measures were decided to be enforced.
The interim measure conditions set by the Board impose the following obligations on Google:
| Interim Measure Area | Specified Condition |
|---|---|
| Equality Among Publishers | No discrimination among news publishers. |
| Economic Value | Providing terms that reflect the economic value in return for used content. |
| Indexing Independence | Keeping publishers' choices to provide content to artificial intelligence (AI) systems independent from their general visibility and indexing rights in Google search results. |
This article was translated from Turkish. Read the original article in Turkish.
