Penske Media Corporation (PMC), owner of iconic publications including Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline, has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against Google and parent company Alphabet, accusing the tech giant of illegally using journalistic content to create AI-generated search summaries that damage publishers’ businesses.
First Major US Publisher Challenge
The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal district court in Washington, D.C., marks the first time a major American publisher has sued Google over its AI Overviews feature—escalating tensions between media companies and tech platforms over AI’s impact on traditional journalism revenue models.
“As a leading global publisher, we have a duty to protect PMC’s best-in-class journalists and award-winning journalism as a source of truth,” said Jay Penske, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of PMC. “Furthermore, 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”.
PMC’s portfolio includes over 20 digital brands that collectively attract 120 million online visitors monthly, making this lawsuit particularly significant for the broader media industry.
Devastating Traffic and Revenue Impacts
The lawsuit reveals alarming statistics about AI’s impact on publisher economics. About 20% of Google searches that link to PMC sites now surface AI Overviews instead—a percentage PMC expects will continue rising.
Most damaging, PMC’s affiliate revenue has declined by more than one-third by the end of 2024 compared to its peak, which the company directly attributes to search traffic declines caused by AI summaries.
The lawsuit argues that Google’s AI summaries “siphon and discourage user traffic to PMC’s and other publishers’ websites” by providing answers directly in search results, eliminating the need for users to click through to original articles.
Monopoly Power Allegations
Central to PMC’s case is the allegation that Google leverages its 90% monopoly in US search to coerce publishers into supplying content for AI training and summaries without proper compensation.
“Google exploits its dominance in search to coerce PMC into permitting Google to republish PMC’s content in AI Overviews” and use that content “for training and grounding its AI models,” the lawsuit states.
PMC argues that without this monopoly power, Google would be forced to negotiate licensing deals, as other AI companies like OpenAI have done with publishers, including The New York Times and The Atlantic.
Breaking the Traditional Publisher-Search Bargain
The lawsuit claims Google has upended the longstanding exchange where publishers allow search crawling in return for referral traffic. Now Google allegedly ties this necessary bargain to additional uses of content that “cannibalize or preempt search referrals”.
Publishers face an impossible choice: opt out and lose devastating amounts of traffic, or allow their content to be repurposed in ways that ultimately reduce clicks to their sites.
“The arrangement constitutes unlawful reciprocal dealing and monopoly leveraging under the Sherman Act,” the lawsuit alleges, “because publishers like PMC cannot realistically opt out without losing critical traffic”.
Google’s Defense Strategy
Google spokesperson José Castañeda responded that AI Overviews make Google search “more helpful” and create “new opportunities for content to be discovered.” He claimed “AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites” and vowed to “defend against these meritless claims”.
However, publishers argue this response ignores the fundamental shift where AI summaries provide enough information to satisfy user queries without requiring clicks to original sources.
Broader Industry Pattern
PMC’s lawsuit joins a growing wave of legal challenges against AI companies over content usage:
- The New York Times sued OpenAI over unauthorized use of articles for ChatGPT training
- Anthropic recently paid $1.5 billion to settle claims around its Claude chatbot using pirated books
- Online education company Chegg filed similar claims against Google in February 2025
Stakes for Digital Media’s Future
The case represents a potentially defining moment for compensation in the AI era. If PMC succeeds, it could reshape how AI search features use and attribute third-party content, potentially requiring tech giants to negotiate licensing agreements with publishers.
“Siphoning and discouraging user traffic to PMC’s and other publishers’ websites in this manner will have profoundly harmful effects on the overall quality and quantity of the information accessible on the Internet,” the lawsuit warns.
European Precedent
Google is already facing antitrust complaints in Europe over its AI Overviews feature, suggesting global regulatory scrutiny of how tech giants monetize AI using third-party content.
The timing coincides with other major antitrust developments, including recent discussions about whether Google should be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
Industry Transformation at Stake
This lawsuit highlights the existential challenge facing traditional media as AI reshapes how people consume information. Publishers invested decades building audiences and revenue models based on driving traffic to their websites—models that AI summaries fundamentally threaten.
The outcome could determine whether publishers receive fair compensation for content that powers AI systems, or whether tech giants can continue leveraging monopoly positions to extract value without adequate payment to content creators.
As digital media fights for survival in the AI age, PMC’s lawsuit represents the industry’s most significant legal challenge yet to Big Tech’s AI content practices.
