Online research will experience a small revolution in France. Google plans to deploy two artificial intelligence (AI) features on its search engine by “this summer”, revealed the regional daily Ouest-France at the start of the week. In a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday June 30, the tech giant confirmed that it was “doing everything possible to deploy AI Previews and AI Mode in France”, but did not specify a launch date. These new tools should profoundly change online search in France, and are worrying press publishers.
Concretely, for each request addressed to Google, Internet users will first see a summary of a few lines generated by Gemini, the artificial intelligence agent of the Mountain View giant. The appearance of these “AI Overviews” will not make the traditional blue links to websites disappear.
Some will be cited as references by the AI, then all will appear in the classic way further down in the results page. However, Internet users will no longer necessarily need to click on a link to obtain the answer to their question. They will be able to read information drawn by AI from the press, without consulting the site where the information originated.
“AI Mode”, a tab giving access to a conversational mode resembling chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, should arrive in France at the same time. France will thus lose its exceptional status. It was one of the last countries where Google’s two AI features were not available. In October 2025, during their deployment in the rest of Europe, Google’s director of public affairs, Kent Walker, explained this specificity by “regulatory reasons”.
More than French regulation, it is a fine of 250 million euros imposed on the firm in 2024 which seems to have slowed down its ambitions. The Competition Authority had sanctioned it for not having respected its commitments concerning neighboring rights, that is to say the remuneration granted to press publishers in exchange for the appearance of their articles on “search”. The Californian giant was notably criticized for not having warned the media of the use of their content to train its AI models.
Decrease in the number of clicks
Two years later, Google this time seems to want to reassure press publishers, already affected by significant drops in revenue. In a letter addressed to the media, consulted by Ouest-France, the firm informed them of their possibility of appearing, or not, in “AI Overviews” and “AI Mode”. A choice which, in theory, should not have an impact on the indexing of their articles in the classic search engine. AI summaries should also give rise to the right to remuneration for related rights, specifies the local daily.
Not sure that Google’s promises are enough to reassure French press groups. While the sector is weakened and job cuts are announced one after the other, the emergence of the two AI tools in the search engine could further reduce their revenues. According to a study published by the Pew Research Center in July 2025, Internet users are half as likely to click on a results link when they have an AI-generated summary.
