Penske Media, the family-owned conglomerate behind Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Variety, has filed a lawsuit against Google in federal court in Washington, D.C., accusing the tech giant of using its journalism in AI-generated summaries without permission, thereby reducing traffic to its websites.
This marks the first instance of a major U.S. publisher challenging Alphabet-owned Google over its AI Overviews, which appear atop search results and are alleged to divert traffic, undermining publishers’ advertising and subscription revenue.
Penske, led by CEO Jay Penske and attracting 120 million monthly online visitors, claims Google leverages its near-90% dominance of the U.S. search market—affirmed by a federal court last year—to condition inclusion in search results on allowing AI use of publishers’ content. Without this market power, Penske argues, Google would need to pay for republishing rights or AI training data.
Google countered on Saturday, asserting that AI Overviews enhance user experience and drive traffic to diverse websites. “We will defend against these meritless claims,” said Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda.
The case comes amid broader industry frustration. A recent antitrust ruling spared Google from divesting Chrome, disappointing publishers and the News/Media Alliance, which represents over 2,200 U.S. publishers. The Alliance’s CEO, Danielle Coffey, criticized Google’s market power, noting that unlike AI firms like OpenAI, which have signed licensing deals with publishers such as News Corp and The Atlantic, Google avoids similar obligations. “When you have Google’s massive scale, you’re not bound by the same norms,” Coffey told Reuters, highlighting the lack of opt-out options for publishers in Google’s AI practices.