CREATe is happy to present the third entry in our working paper series released in 2026: Bargaining through competition law? The publishers saga continues in the UK with CMA conduct requirements imposed on Google by Magali Eben, Senior Lecturer in Competition Law and Deputy Director of the CREATe, University of Glasgow.
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On 3 June 2026 the CMA imposed on Google its eagerly anticipated ‘Publisher Conduct Requirement’, under its powers in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. The Publisher Conduct Requirement intends to address publishers’ dissatisfaction with the use of their Search content in Google’s AI services, by giving them the choice to withhold search content from generative AI use, and providing them with transparency and attribution. The CMA’s conduct requirements are part of a wider trend in which competition authorities attempt to tackle the use of content in Search and AI training, fine-tuning and grounding. Competition authorities have joined the fray of the publishers’ battle both for control over and remuneration for the use of their content by technology firms, be they digital (search or social) platforms or providers of integrated or standalone Generative AI services. This paper reflects on the Publisher Conduct Requirement within the wider context of both the general turn to competition authorities in the battle between publishers and AI (and search) for control over and remuneration for content, but also against the expectations on the CMA itself. It further reflects on whether competition authorities operate in the shadow of copyright, trying to reshape the bargaining process while not entirely accounting for the final shape of the underlying entitlements. The paper also queries the ability of competition law, even in its more flexible regulatory form, to solve what is fundamentally a structural sustainability problem for online content, news media, and cultural production in the age of AI. The paper signals a starting point for a further strand of research within CREATe on AI licensing and competition law.
Full paper can be downloaded here.