Google Wins Dismissal of PMC Lawsuit Over AI Search Snippets

Logo text Google has won dismissal of a lawsuit from Penske Media, parent of The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Rolling Stone, accusing it of illegally using the publisher’s content to produce artificial intelligence-generated snippets of stories, which are displayed to users and undermines traffic to websites. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta found that antitrust laws don’t account for AI overviews of content while nodding to “knock on consequences” to publishers whose “content Google takes and repurposes without compensations.” The issue, it concluded, is better-suited for lawmakers who must answer questions of economic dislocation caused by new technology. Penske Media had alleged Google leveraged its search monopoly to coerce publishers into giving up content in exchange for search referral traffic. Since the emergence of AI overviews and zero-click search results, online publishers have seen drops in users clicking through to their websites. Chartbeat reported a 40 percent year-over-year decline for Google search across its publisher network. In Wednesday’s ruling, the court rebuffed arguments that there was an implied deal between Google and publishers. Crawling publicly available websites, the court said, is simply how search engines operate. Accepting Penske Media’s theory that the publisher has a contract with Google would mean the search giant has agreements with billions of other websites, according to the ruling. “Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free,” Mehta wrote. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.” Separately, the court found that search results and AI overviews meaningfully different offerings since they share the same core purpose. Penske Media had claimed that Google illegally offers AI overviews at the top of its general search engine results page, diverting traffic away from its websites. At the core of the dismissal was the court’s conclusion that Penske Media, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, can’t bring antitrust claims in the general search market since it operates downstream of Google. The loss of referral traffic and ad revenue, Mehta said, aren’t direct antitrust injuries caused by the search giant. The claims could be better suited for an unjust enrichment claim, which the court didn’t decide since the federal claims were dismissed.