Penske Media CEO Jay Penske speaks at the 2024 Forbes Iconoclast Summit at Cipriani Wall Street on June 20, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)
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The simmering tension between media companies and Google over the search giant’s use of those companies’ journalism in its AI products has just spilled over into a new courtroom battle. Penske Media — the company behind outlets like Rolling Stone, Variety, and Billboard — just became the first major U.S. news publisher to sue Google over the AI Overviews that now appear at the top of Search results pages.
The federal antitrust lawsuit accuses Google of abusing its dominance in search to force publishers into a lopsided deal: Basically, Google requires media companies to let Google either use their reporting for inclusion in its AI Overviews, or accept being down-ranked in Google Search. Penske’s complaint argues that practice isn’t fair and has caused significant financial harm, with the company’s affiliate revenue falling by more than a third (as a result of Google’s AI Overviews co-opting traffic that might have otherwise gone to Penske outlets).
More importantly, Penske also describes this dynamic as antitrust behavior from a company abusing what the federal government has already described as Google’s monopoly status in the realm of Internet search. Penske says roughly 20% of Google searches leading to its sites now display AI Overviews — and, here’s the rub, that those summaries lift material from publishers’ work, answer the user’s query directly on the results page, and keep readers from clicking through.
Digital media executive Jason Kint called the Penske filing a “wicked-smart, landmark antitrust lawsuit,” noting that it’s the first to directly tie Google’s AI-driven products to its search monopoly. Adds travel blogger Nate Hake, who runs Travel Lemming, in a long post on X: “Google’s AI Overviews = theft.” Hake goes on to highlight one of the most significant elements of Penske’s filing — that it doesn’t just accuse Google of monopoly abuse, but of also acting as a “monopsonist” (yes, that’s an actual word and not a misspelling) in the area of AI content licensing.
Put simply, Google being a monopsonist in regards to the Penske case would mean it’s using its search dominance not just to lock in search traffic, but to set the terms of how all AI companies acquire the content they train their systems on.
Google, of course, insists the AI Overviews arrangement benefits everyone. “With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered,” spokesperson Jose Castaneda said, dismissing Penske’s claims as “meritless.” The company argues that the traffic which sites do manage to get from users now comes from users who are more engaged and thus more valuable.
But that defense honestly looks pretty suspect, to say the least, in light of the federal government’s contention that Google has a search monopoly, controlling nearly 90% of the market. Meritless? Google’s suggestion that publishers should be grateful for “better” traffic is like someone breaking into your house, taking your things, going on to profit from those things, and then telling you not to complain because they left behind something you should supposedly value instead.
Needless to say, Penske has drawn a new line in the sand here over whether professional journalism has any real protection in the AI-driven era of the internet that Google clearly wants to control.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2025/09/14/why-rolling-stone-owner-penske-media-just-declared-war-on-google/
