The owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety sued Google on Friday, claiming the tech giant’s AI summaries are using its journalism without consent and reducing traffic to its sites.
Penske Media in Federal Court in Washington, DC federal court.
News organizations have said for months that new features, including Google’s “AI reports,” are siphoning traffic away from their sites, destroying advertising and subscription revenue.
Penske, a family-owned media conglomerate led by Jay Penske whose content attracts 120 million online visitors a month, said it only includes publishers’ websites in Google search results if it can also use their articles in AI summaries.
Without the leverage, Google would have to pay publishers for the right to republish their work or use it to train its AI systems, the company said. It added that Google was able to impose such rules because of its search, pointing to a federal court finding last year that the tech giant held nearly 90% of the U.S. search market share.
“We have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital media and preserve its integrity – all of which is threatened by Google’s current actions,” Penske said.
It claimed that about 20% of Google searches looking for this link to websites now show AI reports, a move it expects to see, and added that its affiliate revenue has fallen by more than a third from its peak by the end of 2024, as search traffic declined.
Online education company Chegg also sued Google in February, claiming that the search giant’s AI-generated reviews were a demand for original content and undermined publishers’ ability to compete.
In response to the Penske lawsuit, Google said Saturday that AI reports offer users a better experience and send traffic to a wider range of sites.
“With AI insights, people are searching for more useful content and using it more, creating new ways to discover content. We will defend ourselves against these outrageous claims,” said Google spokesman Jose Castaneda.
A judge handed the company a rare antitrust victory earlier this month, ruling that it would not have to sell its Chrome browser as part of an effort to open up competition in search.
The move disappointed some publishers and industry bodies, including the News/Media Alliance, which said the decision left publishers without the option to opt out of AI reporting.
“All the elements that are being discussed with all the other AI companies do not apply to Google because they have the market power not to engage in these healthy practices,” Danielle Coffey, executive director of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group representing more than 2,200 U.S.-based publishers, told Reuters on Friday.
“When you have the enormous scale and market power that Google has, you’re not obligated to follow the same norms. That’s a problem.”
Coffey cited AI licensing deals firms like Chatgpt-maker Openai have signed with the likes of News Corp, the Financial Times and The Atlantic. Google, whose Gemini Chatbot competes with Chatgpt, has been slower to sign such deals.
Published – September 15, 2025 09:00 AM IST
