The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority just made Google’s AI Overviews problem a lot harder to ignore. The CMA ordered Google to offer publishers clear opt-out controls from AI search features, including AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover, and to properly attribute their content when it appears. Google has nine months to comply.
The conduct requirement goes further than most expected. Opt-outs must work at the page level, not just site-wide — something Google argued in February would drive up crawl costs and create “user confusion.” The CMA rejected that argument, noting it hadn’t seen evidence that page-level controls require extra crawling. Google eventually conceded it could implement them.
The anti-penalization clause matters most. Google can’t downrank publishers who opt out of AI features in organic search results. That’s a structural protection publishers don’t have in the US, where there’s no equivalent enforcement body with this kind of reach over how AI search operates.
What this really means: Apple and Microsoft are next. The CMA confirmed it has ongoing investigations into both under the same digital markets framework that gave it authority here. If the opt-out template holds, every AI search product operating in the UK faces the same pressure. Publishers who’ve been subsidizing Google’s AI training without a seat at the table now have one, at least in the UK.
Google must file an implementation plan within one month.
Nathan Zakhary