For decades, music fanatics flocked to Rolling Stone Magazine for musical and cultural commentary, cinephiles swarmed Variety for the latest critiques and film festival features, and the entire entertainment industry dove into Deadline for business developments and community updates. Now, everyone is finding their fix in one place: Google.
More specifically, individuals can easily find the information they seek without even clicking into a website, by reading Google’s AI-generated summaries, or “AI Overviews,” that populate atop search engine results. Today, AI Overviews are the start, and often the endpoint, of the inquiry.[1]
“With AI Overviews,” says Google Spokesperson Jose Castaneda, “people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered.”[2]
But according to Penske Media Corporation (“PMC”), the publishing company behind Rolling Stone and Variety, these “new opportunities” are coming at much too high a cost. In the latest lawsuit facing Google, PMC slapped the tech titan and its parent company, Alphabet, with antitrust allegations in D.C. Federal Court.[3]
At the core of the dispute is Google’s alleged exploitation of the fundamental exchange of traffic for access between Google and PMC.[4] Traditionally, in this exchange, PMC “allows Google to crawl its websites” (i.e., the “access”) in return for Google “generating Search Referral Traffic to PMC websites” (i.e., the “traffic”).[5] The exchange on its own is not problematic – in fact, it is an existential necessity for “the production of content for the open commercial Web.”[6]
However, in the age of AI, the exploitation of this exchange may run rampant.Google’s expansion into the AI space has created a significant problem for PMC, which also publishes Billboard Media, Deadline, and other major news and media sources.
If PMC’s allegations are true, Google conditions the sale of Search Referral Traffic on the publishers’ acquiescence to Google’s use of their content for AI training purposes.[7] Because of Google’s massive share of the search engine market, PMC has no real choice but to provide such acquiescence. Essentially, by leveraging its monopoly power, Google is able to coerce PMC into surrendering access to its websites, thus enabling Google to poach PMC journalism.[8]
In its complaint filed on September 12, 2025, PMC alleged that “even when publishers have chosen to opt out of training Google’s AI products […], Google still trains its search-specific AI products, including AI Overviews, on PMC’s content.”[9] The consequence is a sharp reduction in traffic to PMC websites.[10] PMC claims it “has seen significant declines in clicks from Google searches since Google started rolling out AI Overviews.”[11]
According to PMC, this manner of dealing “amounts to a form of unlawful reciprocal dealing that harms competition in violation of the Sherman Act.”[12] US courts have interpreted Section 2 of the Sherman Act as requiring: a) the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market; and b) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that monopoly power.[13] According to a Thomson Reuters breakdown of the Sherman Act, this means companies should start worrying about Section 2 any time they cross over 50% market share.”[14] According to a federal court’s finding last year, “Google held a near 90% share of the US search market.”[15]
PMC’s suit against Google is not the first time the tech titan has faced antitrust allegations, nor is it the first time AI technology has opened the door to unprecedented exploitation that yields complex legal disputes. PMC’s latest filing marks only the most recent of numerous lawsuits against tech companies plunging into the frontier of AI.
In July of 2023, Google was hit by a class action alleging its artificial-intelligence training models infringed artists’ and writers’ copyrights.[16] In December of 2023, the New York Times filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the defendants infringed on copyrights through the unlicensed and unpermitted use and reproduction of Times works during the training of its GPT models.[17] In August of 2024, Anthropic faced a class action filed by a group of authors alleging the AI company illegally used millions of digitized copyrighted books to train the large language models behind their chatbot, Claude, without permission.[18] On June 11, 2025, Disney sued Midjourney– the first time a major Hollywood studio sued a generative AI platform – claiming it trained copyrighted works and produced images resembling Disney’s iconic protected characters.[19] This past September, Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. sued Minimax for essentially the same thing: copyright infringement based on Minimax’s image and video-generating service, which “pirates and plunders” the studios’ intellectual property to train its AI models.[20]
As the onslaught of AI-centric litigation mounts, we must ask ourselves an important question: what does this trend in legal disputes tell us? The answer is twofold. The swell of litigation concerning generative AI is a direct response to the vast threat that AI poses, not only to the rights of artists and copyright holders, but to the quality of creative content itself.
PMC asserts that Google’s monopolistic, anticompetitive AI practices siphon readers away from the original source of content, consequently “starving PMC and other publishers of search traffic” that it depends on to survive.[21] “The resulting decrease in user visits to PMC sites diminishes PMC’s revenue, which in turn threatens PMC’s ability to continue investing in and producing high-quality content.”[22]
Earlier this September, in another lawsuit, Google secured a big antitrust win. A judge allowed it to keep Chrome and Android under its umbrella and continue paying tech companies to promote its search engine, thereby crushing the efforts of certain publishing companies who were hoping to rein in Google’s sweeping control over marketplace competition.[23] This recent ruling begs another pointed question: at what point will courts draw the line for Google?
Google’s technological innovation precipitates progress that should generally be regarded as a good thing. After all, our modern society is the product of similar innovation. At the same time, however, while technology’s evolution is generally positive, lawmakers and courts have a duty to protect the future of digital media. If AI Overviews have the effect of reducing traffic to publisher websites, consequently slashing the revenue generated by those visits, then publishers may fall fatally short of the funds necessary to employ reporters, writers, and other vital roles for operating a media business.[24]
This should not only concern publishers like PMC; it should seriously concern us all. After all, “fewer stories mean less information for businesses and consumers to make informed choices about the world we live in.”[25]
“If unchecked,” pleads PMC, “[Google’s] anticompetitive practices will destroy the business model that supports independent journalism.”[26] As we weigh the implications of each party’s potential victory in this case, we must consider the issue not only as consumers of online content but as members of a free society with independent press. If only one function could survive, which one would we choose? The pending outcome of this case will serve, in part, to forecast the answer to that question.
[1] Reuters, Rolling Stone, Billboard owner Penske sues Google over AI overviews, CNN Business (September 13, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/14/tech/rolling-stone-billboard-penske-sues-google-ai-hnk.
[2] Id.
[3] Nadia Dreid, Rolling Stone Publisher Says Google AI Robs Its Content, LAW360 (September 15, 2025), https://www.law360.com/articles/2387847/rolling-stone-publisher-says-google-ai-robs-its-content.
[4] Complaint at 2, Penske Media Corporation et al. v. Google LLC et al., No. 1:25-cv-03192 (D.D.C. September 12, 2025).
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] See generally id.
[8] See generally id.
[9] Id. at 66.
[10] See generally id.; Reuters, supra note 1.
[11] Complaint at 69.
[12] Complaint at 4.
[13] Sterling Miller, Antitrust Law Basics – Section 2 of the Sherman Act, Thomson Reuters (May 17, 2023), https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/antitrust-law-basics-section-2-of-the-sherman-act/.
[14] Id.
[15] Reuters, supra note 1.
[16] Dorothy Atkins, Google Gets IP Claims Against Some AI Products Tossed,LAW360 (September 12, 2025), https://www.law360.com/articles/2387483/google-gets-ip-claims-against-some-ai-products-tossed.
[17] Audrey Pope, NYT v. OpenAI: The Times’s About-Face, Harvard Law Review Blog Essays (April 10, 2024), https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2024/04/nyt-v-openai-the-timess-about-face/.
[18] Chloe Veltman, In a first-of-its-kind decision, an AI company wins a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by authors, NPR Technology (June 25, 2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/06/25/nx-s1-5445242/federal-rules-in-ai-companys-favor-in-landmark-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-authors-bartz-graeber-wallace-johnson-anthropic.
[19] Tom Espiner, Disney and Universal sue AI firm Midjourney over images, BBC (June 11, 2025), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5vjqdm1ypo.
[20] Todd Spangler, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCU Sue Chinese AI Company MiniMax, Alleging It ‘Pirates and Plunders’ Studios’ Copyrighted Works on ‘Massive Scale’, Variety (September 16, 2025), https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/disney-warner-bros-discovery-nbcu-lawsuit-minimax-chinese-ai-company-1236520395/.
[21] Dreid, supra note 3.
[22] Id.
[23] Lisa Eadicicco, Google’s courtroom victory just saved Apple from a big headache, CNN Business (September 3, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/03/tech/google-antitrust-apple#:~:text=Google%20was%20spared%20the%20worst,also%20good%20news%20for%20Apple/.
[24] Complaint at 73.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.