The New Dark Age

Tuesday, 28 April 2026 — Foxglove

Great news on our work to stop Google driving independent journalists out of business – an influential government watchdog in Brazil has launched a formal investigation into Google’s theft of journalists’ work for use in its AI products.

Google’s AI Overviews began rolling out in Brazil and the UK in 2024. They ‘scrape’ websites to steal vast amounts of material in order to auto-generate the summaries that have now replaced the top list of search results on Google.

Those summaries are frequently found to be inaccurate, and the President of Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) has now said they may be an “exploitative abuse of dominance.” [1]

Google does not pay anyone for their work, but uses the material it scrapes up to maximise profits by keeping users on its own site – then it pushes the sources way down the results list where very few people will click on them. If journalists and media outlets want to opt out, they will be removed from Google altogether – which is essentially being removed from the Internet as Google controls 90% of search.

This is threatening the very survival of the online news business. If journalists’ work is taken from them, without payment, and published elsewhere, they simply will not be able to continue.

But this isn’t just bad news for the news industry. Google being allowed to drive independent journalism out of business presents a huge risk to our democracy. We rely on independent sources of information to tell us what’s going on – and to hold the powerful (not least Big Tech companies) to account.

Any company as large and powerful as Google becomes impossible for individuals to resist alone, and that’s why Foxglove has stepped up to challenge them.

Together with our partners, we’ve gathered evidence of the harm Google is causing, and independent watchdogs and regulators around the world are taking notice – and starting to act.

Brazil’s watchdog is now the latest to launch a formal investigation, joining the European Commission, which began last year. And earlier this year, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) put forward proposals that could allow journalists to stop Google from stealing their work.

More to come on this soon – including what we can all do to push our Governments to act.

Donald Campbell

Director of Advocacy, Foxglove

P.S. Help protect independent journalism, truth and democracy from these urgent threats by making a donation towards our work against Google today: www.foxglove.org.uk/donate

https://www.gov.br/cade/en/matters/news/cade2019s-tribunal-recommends-the-opening-of-an-investigation-into-google-regarding-the-use-of-journalistic-content