When Google's Sulina Connal, Managing Director of News and Books Partnerships for EMEA, took the stage at a recent industry event, publishers were hoping to hear something concrete.

What they got instead was a carefully worded promise of complexity — and it has not gone over well.

Connal's statement, as reported by Press Gazette, acknowledged the growing pressure from publishers and content creators who want more control over how their content appears in Google Search's AI-powered features:

We've heard the need for more controls and we've heard that pretty consistently, controls on how news content appears on search, and we have a set of proposals from the authority in the UK.

What I can tell you at this stage is that we're exploring more granular controls. Because AI is integral to how search works, implementing the new controls is a complex engineering, huge engineering project, and we have been highly intentional in our approach. The idea is to focus on simple, scalable tools that you can use to manage your content.

We also understand that to allow you to make informed decisions about search AI features you need more information, and measuring users' engagement is key to that. We hear you, and we hear you loud and clear.
—Google’s Sulina Connal speaking at the FT Strategies News in the Digital...