Penske Media, which has publications such as Rolling Stones, Variety Shows and Billboards, is Prosecuting Googleclaiming that the search giant is illegally using its content and other publishers’ content to fill out AI overviews that have become fixed content at the top of Google’s search results.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court on Friday, Penske argued that through its monopoly in online searches, Google’s “misconduct” forced publishers to acquiesce their content, shifted readers from publishers’ websites, and deprived them of their own ability to make money from content created by journals.
“It is reasonable to foresee that Google’s forced entry into the online publishing output market will result in reduced traffic for other online publishers, while online publishers that actually generate their own content will reduce their revenue, thus providing consumers with less online publishing.”
In 2024, the same district court ruled Google illegally protects its search monopoly. Earlier this month, Judge Amit Mehta released Fines found In this case, say the company must share some search data with its competitors.
Google delayed a lawsuit against Penske on Monday, saying it was providing valuable services.
“Google sends billions of clicks on sites every day, and AI overview sends traffic to more sites,” said José Castañeda, policy communications manager at Google. “We will defend these priceless claims.”
Penske did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has also published Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire, WWD (Women’s Daily), Artnews, Artforum, and more.
There has been a relationship between online publishers and Google for decades. By indexing websites on the Internet, search giants can provide people with the latest relevant information for their queries. In exchange for Google (which accounts for nearly 90% of the search market) crawling, publishers can get traffic through these search results as long as people have a reason to click.
Don’t miss our unbiased technical content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET As the preferred source of Google.
With the emergence Generated AI tools But, like Openai’s Chatgpt and Google’s Gemini, that relationship is changing. Instead of spending time browsing the link list and reading the selection of articles and web pages, you get a neat comprehensive summary in seconds that combines information from AI Tools’ training data, directly from the web.
A wide range of publishers and authors argue that AI companies train their AI models without proper permission and profit from high-quality human-made content. So some people sued OpenAI, confusion, anthropomorphism, Microsoft and Google. (Disclosure: CNET’s parent company Ziff Davis filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, accusing Ziff Davis of infringing on Ziff Davis’ copyright in training and operating its AI system.)
At the same time, the data shows that whenever an AI overview appears in the search, there is a The click-through rate dropped significantly to the original material. Google claims AI sent itHigher quality clicks“For websites, this means that these visitors are more involved on these sites.
The outcome of the Penske lawsuit could have a significant impact on publishers and AI companies, including Google.
“If Penske wins, this could lead to the platform needing to negotiate a license agreement with the publisher to include a summary in the search or overview feature.” Robert Rosenbergan intellectual property partner of New York-based company Moses Singer.
Rosenberg said a ruling could also determine “transformative” efforts, i.e., unaffected by copyright protection, or could lead to further regulatory pressure on Google. “This situation emphasizes how the dominant platform imposes its own terms due to the size of the scale.”
