Generative AI, not ad tech, is the new antitrust battleground for Google

Independent publishers say Google’s AI Overviews have left them in a no-win bind — and they’re taking the fight to EU regulators.

The Independent Publishers Alliance, which has 45 members, non-profit big-tech watchdog Foxglove Group, and U.K.-based non-profit advocacy group Movement for an Open Web, have filed a joint complaint with the European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition Markets Authority (CMA), requesting they take immediate action against Google to prevent what they describe as irreparable harm caused by Google’s AI Overviews.

Currently, publishers using Google search claim they are unable to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model training and/or being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s search results.

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TikTok might be working on a standalone U.S. app, but marketers aren’t sold on the idea – yet

TikTok is reportedly developing a separate version of its app for the U.S. — a contingency plan as pressure builds for ByteDance to divest. But for marketers, it raises more questions than answers.

“I’d be curious to learn more about how the user data and ad stack and process will evolve, which certainly has the potential to be the bigger disruption (as compared to usage numbers),” said Chris Mele, managing partner at marketing agency Siberia. 

To recap: the platform’s staff are currently beavering away on a new version of TikTok currently codenamed “M2”, apparently due to hit app stores Sept. 5. According to The Information, the company expects to discontinue the current app in the U.S. in March 2026, and hand it over to M2 from that point. TikTok didn’t respond to a request for comment by time of publication.

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