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Image from The Decoder
For certain searches, Google's AI Overviews told readers that two Munich publishers were known for dubious business practices, subscription traps and scams, with a summary, red flags and tips for users. None of the linked sources said any of it: the overview had folded facts about other, genuinely dubious companies into the plaintiffs. They sent a cease-and-desist and Google argued that users know to check AI output. In late May 2026 the Regional Court of Munich I (case 26 O 869/26) granted a preliminary injunction, holding that an overview is Google's own statement rather than a list of somebody else's, so the limited liability search engines enjoy under German case law does not reach it, and that a warning to verify does not excuse a claim the sources never made. Google pays 80 percent of the costs and is appealing; a Berlin court took the opposite view in June in a different case.
Regional Court of Munich I, in The Decoder
[The AI overview rewrites and judges results] in its own words and according to its own structure [...] [and makes claims] that are not even made in the search results. [...] [Google is liable] because it alone has influence over the AI's offering and the algorithms with which the AI operates. [...] [An AI's opinion is] not the expression of an acquired conviction of the persons expressing it, but the result of an algorithm.
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