The loss of a major antitrust case in which it was found to have an illegal monopoly on Internet searches does not appear to have assuaged Google’s greed for more control over search results. Even as the Justice Department suggests its search operations may need to be dismantled, the company is testing new ways to divert even more traffic and advertising revenue from smaller website owners.

The first glimpses of AI appeared at the top of search results. Now, the company appears to be experimenting with a feature that takes content from online chefs and cookbooks and completely removes the need to visit their websites.

First reported by Search Engine Roundtable (which we encourage you to click on), the new “Quick View” feature is a button that appears for some Google users on recipe images in search results. Clicking on it brings you the ingredient list and instructions for the recipe from the publisher’s website, presented in a neat little window that keeps the user on Google’s website.

“Here, Google isn’t giving you a snippet of information, encouraging the searcher to click through to the publisher’s site,” wrote Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable. “Instead, Google serves you the entire toolkit straight on a silver platter.”

It was not immediately clear to what extent the new “Quick View” feature was being tested.

“We’re always experimenting with different ways to connect our users with high-quality, useful information,” Google spokeswoman Brianna Duff wrote in an email. “We’ve partnered with a limited number of creators to begin exploring new recipe experiences on search that are both useful for users and generate value for the web ecosystem. We have nothing to announce at this time. Duff added that for this limited trial of Quick View, Google has “agreements in place with participating recipe creators.”

It’s an interesting time for Google to look for new ways to keep users on its domain, given the angry noises coming from Washington.

In a court filing Tuesday in which it discussed strategies to dismantle Google’s search monopoly, the Justice Department said it plans to “require Google to allow websites crawled for Google Search to refuse to take training or appear in any product or artificial intelligence product owned by Google.” feature on Google Search.

The language appears aimed at Google’s AI Overview feature, which (often poorly) summarizes content from other websites. But it would probably also apply to a feature like Quick View that scrapes entire sections of content and repackages them at the top of search results.

In addition to the DOJ’s scrutiny, a group of Democratic senators has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how Google misappropriates content from website owners and how these practices enrich the content giant. technology by diverting traffic and advertising revenue away from smaller publishers. In their letter to the FTC, the senators specifically referenced how this would harm recipe websites.

“If a user searches for a recipe, a search engine would have previously directed them to a content creator’s website,” they wrote. “But today, many generative AI features copy information from these websites (without permission) and present it directly to the user in the form of an AI-generated recipe, directly competing with these websites.”

The only way for the recipe publisher to avoid having its content stolen by Google would be to refuse to be indexed by the web’s most powerful gatekeeper, “which would result in a significant drop in SEO traffic” , they wrote.

It’s become an Internet trope to complain about the long stories and philosophical musings that precede the instructions on many recipe websites, but if Google’s solution is to drive traffic away from those websites, it doesn’t there may be more recipes to scroll to. We’ll find ourselves alone in the kitchen with Google and its step-by-step instructions for botulism or glue-covered pizza.