Judge throws out Penske Media's lawsuit over Google's AI Overviews

[Sharp Scholar]

A US judge has dismissed the lawsuit brought by Penske Media against Google over AI Overviews. Penske, which publishes Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone, argued that Google's AI summaries had cut traffic to its sites and damaged its advertising and affiliate revenue by more than a third. Press Gazette has the details. It is a significant ruling for publishers hoping the courts would force Google to pay for AI use of their content

The case was heard by US District Judge Amit Mehta, the same judge who ruled in 2024 that Google holds an illegal monopoly in search. This time he found that no enforceable contract existed between publishers and Google. Publishers chose to let Google crawl their sites because they wanted search traffic, not because of any formal agreement. In his words, an expectation is not an agreement, it is simply how a general search engine works. That earlier ruling is still going through the remedies stage

Penske had argued that a long historical course of dealing created an implied contract. Mehta called that entirely implausible, since it would mean Google has contracts with billions of indexed websites. He also rejected the claim that Google was illegally tying AI Overviews to search. The court saw AI Overviews and normal search results as one integrated product rather than two separate ones

Industry groups were unhappy. Jason Kint of Digital Content Next pointed out that Google has an adjudicated illegal monopoly in search and is swallowing up the journalism of humanity to power its AI products while sending less traffic back. That is a fair summary of how many publishers feel. Ironically, Google has started offering opt outs for AI features and, as we discussed this week, has begun paying some publishers for content used in AI features

I am not a lawyer, but the ruling seems to say the problem cannot be solved through contract law. That leaves new legislation or commercial deals as the main options. Do you think publishers have any legal route left? And should Google be required to pay for content used in AI answers?

Penske AI Overviews lawsuit dismissed because 'no formal bargain' struck with Googlepressgazette.co.uk