Penske Media sues Google over AI Overviews; filed Sept. 12, naming 15 plaintiffs
Complaint says AI-generated search summaries have caused significant traffic and revenue declines
Penske argues Google cannibalises referrals, exploiting dominant search position and open-web economics
Lawsuit seeks revenue redress and injunction; Google defends AI Overviews as helpful
Penske Media Corporation, the owner of titles including Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, has filed a lawsuit against Google and parent Alphabet alleging the company unlawfully repurposes publishers’ material to produce AI-generated search summaries known as “AI Overviews”.
The suit accuses Google of damaging publishers’ traffic and revenue. The complaint, brought on Sept. 12 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, names Penske and 14 subsidiaries as plaintiffs.
Penske says it long allowed Google to crawl and index its sites under a “fundamental bargain” where visibility and clicks compensated publishers for creating content. The suit contends Google has turned that bargain into a two-part demand: index our content and also let Google reuse it for generative-AI outputs that cannibalise referrals. That, Penske argues, unfairly competes for user attention and “exploits” Google’s dominant position in search.
According to the complaint, the rollout of AI Overviews has coincided with “significant declines in clicks from Google searches,” reducing advertising, subscription and affiliate income that publishers rely on. Penske says the only practical way to avoid the alleged misuse would be to withdraw from Google search entirely, an option it says would be “devastating”.
Google Pushes Back
Google dismissed the lawsuit as meritless in a statement, saying AI Overviews make search “more helpful” and that the feature drives traffic to “a greater diversity of sites.” Spokesperson José Castañeda added: “Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend against these meritless claims.”
Penske’s filing comes amid a wave of legal challenges and regulatory scrutiny over how major tech firms use third-party content to power AI. The same legal team that represents Penske previously acted for authors in a copyright case against Anthropic. Independent publishers have also lodged complaints with European authorities over Google’s AI Overviews, and other firms have publicly accused Google of harming their businesses by resurfacing proprietary content in search summaries.
Publishers’ Outlook
Publishers frame the dispute as a core question about the economics of the open web: they permit indexing to attract readers and revenue; if search engines instead surface publisher content directly in AI summaries, the logic that funds original journalism is threatened, Penske’s CEO Jay Penske said in a statement, adding a responsibility “to proactively fight for the future of digital media and preserve its integrity.”
The suit seeks redress for lost revenues and an injunction against Google’s alleged practices; the exact remedies sought are laid out in the complaint. Google, for its part, will defend the legality and public benefit of AI Overviews. The case adds to a broader legal conversation about platform power, copyright, and whether new AI features should be treated differently from traditional search snippets.
