Administrative Inquiry No. 08700.003498/2019-03 (Google Scraping), initiated based on elements identified in response to an official letter filed in the Google Shopping case, has gained renewed momentum before CADE’s Tribunal by shifting the focus from the debate on scraping of journalistic content – a method of automated collection of information published on websites – to a broader discussion on artificial intelligence and exploitative abuse in digital markets.
The controversy originated from Google’s practice of displaying snippets – short excerpts or summaries of news, usually composed of a title, brief description and sometimes image – directly on the search results page, retaining the user’s attention in its own ecosystem. At first, the General Superintendence, the Department of Economic Studies and the then Reporting Commissioner Gustavo Augusto had concluded that this functionality generated traffic for the press outlets and, therefore, would not constitute an exclusionary practice.
This understanding, however, was revised based on the opinion of Commissioner Diogo Thomson (current Interim President), delivered on April 8, 2026, who proposed a theoretical requalification of the case. According to the President, the previous analysis had been conducted under an outdated framework focused exclusively on potential exclusionary effects, whereas the observed phenomenon more closely resembled an exploitative abuse. In his view, Google occupies the position of an indispensable commercial partner for publishers, unilaterally defining how, when and to what extent third-party content is displayed and monetized. In addition, technological evolution would have shifted the object of the debate from snippets to AI Overviews, which synthesize journalistic content through artificial intelligence without remuneration to the original producers, aggravating the asymmetry of bargaining and bringing the case closer to international precedents that recognize this type of dynamic.
More recently, on April 23, 2026, the opinion of Commissioner Camila Pires followed this conclusion and added relevant methodological recommendations [Lefosse1] [Lefosse2] for the new investigative phase to be conducted by the General Superintendence. Among such recommendations, the guidance for the instruction to investigate in detail the economic impacts of the use of journalistic content by AI Overviews stands out. This includes, for example, data collection with disaggregation by functionality, search type, content category, and publisher profile, covering metrics such as impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), zero-click behaviour, query reformulation, page scroll, dwell time, and referral traffic. Whenever possible, such data should be presented in a comparative perspective between scenarios with and without the functionality and, when applicable, before and after their introduction in Brazil.
By incorporating these recommendations into the prevailing opinion, CADE’s Tribunal not only ordered the case to be returned to the General Superintendence for the initiation of administrative proceeding, but also established a significant position on how the antitrust authority may begin to frame practices in digital markets in light of the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and the potential exploitative bias of conduct by big tech companies.
This material is for informational purposes only. Our Competition and Antitrust team is available to provide specific legal advice.
