Google Sued By Rolling Stone Over AI Overviews

A lawsuit against Google is claiming unjust enrichment and monopolistic abuse over AI Overview.

In May of 2024, I wrote an article pointing out that Google’s AI Overview could very easily have a profoundly negative impact on publishers. This simply because the overviews offered by AI is moving search results further down the page and eliminating most users desire to click on links. Like so many of my other warnings, it ended up getting ignored and dismissed as silly ramblings… and being completely accurate. Pretty par for the course, really.

In the months that followed, traffic to Freezenet plummeted. It went from a promising 250-400 views to a life support level of 50-75. As much as I looked around, I saw very few complaints about this dramatic change. I knew different websites had different traffic source setups, so no one was going to be impacted in the exact same way as me, but at the same time, I knew there had to be others suffering greatly. Then, in March, I saw talk about about Google moving directly towards AI only results. So, while traffic is being reduced down to a trickle, Google was gearing up to take what little traffic was left away from smaller websites like Freezenet.

It’s hard to say if it was ego or something else entirely, but few publications were refusing to admit that they were taking a massive hit in traffic like myself. Still, publications couldn’t hold their breath forever with hopes that their traffic plummeting was only a temporary thing. Cracks began to form as Cloudflare, back in May, confirmed through their study that websites were, in fact, getting absolutely pummelled by Google’s move towards AI. This by calling the new search system the “zero click” internet.

Fast forward to July and Google finally received its first anti-trust complaint over in Europe. The complaint rightfully relies on anti-trust as opposed to the heavily flawed copyright infringement used against other AI models (flawed because the activity clearly falls within the realm of fair use/fair dealing/whatever other equivalent).

Regardless, Google forged ahead with the AI only search results with AI Mode. While not the default results, it signals that Google is, in fact, serious about ensuring that people stop clicking onto third party websites – this while confirming the earlier warnings as accurate. If all of that wasn’t convincing enough, Google itself, at one point, admitted in court documents that the open web is, in fact, rapid decline. When that admission made waves, Google tried to walk back those comments afterwards, but the admission stuck for people gradually catching on to what Google was really up to.

Recently, I stumbled across an article that talks about a lawsuit filed by Rolling Stone (the publisher). In a similar fashion to the European complaint, Rolling Stone is complaining that Google is abusing its monopoly and is unjustly enriching itself. From Gizmodo:

Google has insisted that its AI-generated search result overviews and summaries have not actually hurt traffic for publishers. The publishers disagree, and at least one is willing to go to court to prove the harm they claim Google has caused. Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, sued Google on Friday over allegations that the search giant has used its work without permission to generate summaries and ultimately reduced traffic to its publications.

Penske’s argument is pretty simple: by showing an AI-generated summary of an article at the top of the page via Google’s AI Overview panel, users have little reason to click through to read the full article, resulting in dwindling traffic finding its way to the publisher’s platforms, which it needs in order to monetize its content, either through ads or subscriptions. The search engine, the company argues, uses its monopoly over search to basically make publishers give up access to their content for next to nothing.

Notably, Penske claims that in recent years, Google has basically given publishers no choice but to give up access to its content. The lawsuit claims that Google now only indexes a website, making it available to appear in search, if the publisher agrees to give Google permission to use that content for other purposes, like its AI summaries. If you think you lose traffic by not getting clickthroughs on Google, just imagine how bad it would be to not appear at all.

Google tried making the same talking point by saying that its AI is not resulting in a decline in web traffic. However, the evidence continues to increase that this is exactly the effect it is happening:

That doesn’t match up with what publishers claim to be seeing. DMG Media, owner of the Daily Mail, claims click-through-rates by as much as 89% since AI Overviews were rolled out. A Wall Street Journal report from earlier this year said Business Insider, The Washington Post, and HuffPost have all reported traffic declines. Pew Research also found that people don’t click through nearly as often when an AI overview is available, finding that people who are served search results that don’t have an AI summary click through to an article nearly twice as often as those who see an AI-generated result.

The evidence is increasingly getting overwhelming at this point. Google is killing traffic to publisher websites. Those websites are of all shapes and sizes as well. While not all websites rely on Google search traffic, a very large chunk does and they are getting absolutely pummelled right now. I was probably one of the first out of the gate to point this out. Now, more and more are following suit. I, for one, am relieved that a lawsuit was filed in the US over this. It took way too long for that to happen, but it’s at least happening. One can only hope that Canadian publishers follow suit and file their own lawsuit in Canada as well.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.