On September 12, 2025, Penske Media Corporation (PMC) filed suit against Google in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Penske Media Corp. v. Google LLC, Case No. 1:25-cv-03192). The complaint alleges that Google has unlawfully abused its dominance in general search to appropriate publishers’ content, divert referral traffic, and undermine the economic model that funds journalism. Among other claims, PMC accuses Google of:
- Conditioning access to search referrals on participation in AI-driven features like Featured Snippets and AI Overviews;
- Engaging in “reciprocal dealing” that coerces publishers into supplying content without consent or compensation;
- Reducing publishers’ ability to monetize through advertising and affiliate links, thereby threatening the sustainability of their operations.
PMC frames the case as a defense of high-quality journalism and cultural reporting against a monopolist intent on keeping users within Google’s own ecosystem. But beneath the legal framing lies a deeper question: was there ever really a “bargain,” and if so, who broke it?
The Lawsuit’s Core Claim
PMC’s lawsuit rests on a simple story: publishers created valuable content, Google once distributed it fairly through search, but then Google changed the bargain. By introducing featured snippets, answer boxes, and now AI Overviews, Google keeps more of the value for itself. Users get answers without clicking through, and publishers lose the traffic that monetized their journalism.
It’s a compelling narrative of betrayal: the content creators who powered the open web are now victims of the very platform they helped build.
The Unwritten Bargain
There was, for a time, an implicit bargain that powered the early web:
- Publishers supplied content.
- Google supplied distribution.
- Users supplied attention.
That interplay became the catalyst for whole industries. Right or wrong, it allowed many publishers to migrate online as print waned. But it was never a contract. It was an equilibrium — fragile, shifting, and never guaranteed.
Did Google Really Need Your Content?
Publishers now argue that Google depended on their journalism. But dependence was never symmetrical. Google needs content in aggregate, but rarely from any single outlet. For most queries, substitutes abound: competitors, blogs, forums, Wikipedia, public data.
If a publisher vanished, Google’s index would barely skip a beat. The asymmetry was stark: Google’s dependence was diffuse, while publishers’ dependence was absolute.
I have been trying to convince site owners for years that it is their job to try to align with Google’s indexing and scoring methodology, not Google accommodating them. Everyone has been fat and happy and really did not give SEO and organic traffic that much credit until it went away. Now, everyone is scrambling with a plethora of acronyms to claw it back, with many taking it to the courts.
The Pivot That Created Fragility
Originally, titles like Rolling Stone thrived on subscriptions. Readers paid for access because the product carried cultural authority.
But when consumers resisted paying online, the industry pivoted:
- Ad overload: pages cluttered with autoplay video, pop-ups, and interstitials.
- Affiliate arbitrage: keyword-driven buying guides and reviews designed to capture Google referrals and convert clicks into commissions.
Some outlets preserved journalistic quality. Others became traffic machines, optimized for rankings rather than loyalty. In chasing short-term monetization, many eroded their own user experience.
The Game of Snippets
It’s also important to remember: publishers weren’t just passive victims of Google’s evolving SERP. They actively played the game.
- Land the featured snippet, and you could dominate visibility while still winning the click.
- Optimize for “People Also Ask”, and you gained more entry points to your site.
- Create listicles, FAQs, and definition articles, because those formats won prime SERP real estate.
For years, this strategy worked. The snippets and boxes gave publishers extra exposure and meaningful traffic. Publishers gamified content to match those formats because the payoff was real.
But when Google changed the rules — first reducing click-through, then collapsing answers directly into the SERP with AI Overviews — the reward loop broke. The link that once sat under the snippet became optional, or disappeared entirely.
So what did publishers really lose?
- Not their content — it remains published.
- Not user demand — people still search for news and reviews.
- They lost the reward structure that made playing Google’s game profitable.
That is a very different claim than “our work was stolen.”
The Bargain vs. The Protocol
In its filing, PMC asserts that it allows Google to crawl its sites “for the limited purpose of generating search referral traffic.” That makes it sound like a contractual exchange: we give you access, you give us clicks.
But that’s not how crawling works. There was never a negotiation, never an agreement. It’s binary: you either make your site indexable or you don’t. Google takes in billions of pages; no single publisher dictates the terms.
To call this a bargain is like putting up a billboard on a highway and then insisting the state Department of Transportation has agreed to send you customers. The DOT provides the road. You chose to put your sign there. Traffic may come, or it may not. But there’s no obligation that drivers stop at your store.
What PMC describes as an “exchange” was, in truth, an assumption — that open access would guarantee referral traffic. That assumption underwrote their pivot to ad and affiliate monetization. When the assumption broke, they reframed it as betrayal.
The Claim of Changed Terms
PMC goes further, alleging that Google has tied participation in this “bargain” to new conditions: that as a prerequisite for indexing, publishers must also allow their content to be used in features like snippets and AI overviews — features they say “cannibalize or preempt search referrals.”
But this miscasts product evolution as coercion. Google has always used its index for multiple features: search rankings, Knowledge Panels, News boxes, image search, and more. Publishers never got to negotiate how their content was displayed in each one. To call AI Overviews a “new condition” is like claiming the mall changed your lease when it moved the food court. You never controlled the layout of the mall. You chose to set up shop inside because the foot traffic was worth it.
Cannibalization isn’t new, either. Featured snippets and “People Also Ask” already siphon off clicks. Publishers tolerated it because the remaining traffic still justified the gamble. What’s changed is the degree, not the principle.
The reality is that publishers stayed open because the subsidy of free traffic outweighed the risks. Now that the subsidy is shrinking, they describe it as extortion. But the leverage was always Google’s to wield.
User Choice vs. Platform Restriction
With featured snippets, the user still had agency. The summary was visible, but the link was right there. If users chose not to click, that was their choice — not Google’s restriction.
AI Overviews shift the balance. Often, there is no link at all, or it’s buried below the fold. The user’s choice disappears because the platform decides what to show.
This is where PMC’s case has more bite — but only in situations where the content is truly exclusive (a Variety scoop, an ARTnews essay), not commodity content that dozens of sites cover. If the answer comes from a “best earbuds” list, Google isn’t stealing journalism; it’s disintermediating affiliate arbitrage.
The Affiliate Reality
PMC emphasizes that Google’s conduct threatens its “award-winning journalism.” But much of what’s at stake is not exclusive reporting — it’s commerce content.
Take Rolling Stone’s RS Recommends vertical. Articles like The 7 Best Sounding Earbuds are designed to capture Google searches and monetize them through affiliate links. The model is straightforward: target high-value queries, publish product roundups, disclose affiliate partnerships, and convert clicks into commissions through Amazon, Best Buy, or brand partners.
This isn’t unique cultural journalism. Dozens of outlets publish near-identical lists. Rolling Stone won visibility not because of exclusivity, but because it optimized for Google’s algorithm.
When Google’s AI Overview answers “best earbuds” with a synthesized list, what Rolling Stone loses is not journalism but affiliate commissions. That loss may hurt revenue, but it undermines the claim that Google is appropriating unique cultural content.
Counterintuitive Claims That Weaken Their Case
PMC leans heavily on antitrust framing in its complaint:
- Reciprocal dealing (¶11): They argue Google coerced them into supplying content for unwanted uses. But reciprocal dealing requires a bilateral agreement. Crawling is binary, not contractual. To call it reciprocal dealing is to confuse a protocol with a promise.
- Reduced output (¶12): They claim Google’s conduct “reduces publishing output.” Yet the search era massively increased output. Publishers scaled volume precisely because free traffic made it profitable. If anything, search incentives encouraged overproduction, not scarcity.
- Unique, compelling content (¶13): They highlight scoops from Variety and ARTnews, then fold in parenting tips from SheKnows or affiliate shopping guides from Rolling Stone. This conflates investigative reporting with commodity content. AI Overviews may reduce clicks, but in many cases, what disappears are affiliate commissions, not Pulitzer-worthy journalism.
I am not a lawyer, but these contradictions seem to weaken the moral high ground part of their argument. The story they want to tell is one of “journalism stolen.” But the closer truth is that much of what’s threatened is arbitrage dressed up as reporting.
The Subscription Problem
PMC repeatedly insists its content is unique, compelling, and superior. If that’s true, why hasn’t subscription revenue proven it? Why have titles like Variety and Billboard dropped paywalls to chase free Google traffic?
The hard truth is that consumers will pay for some journalism — The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist — but not for every outlet. PMC’s reliance on ad and affiliate models is not evidence of betrayal by Google; it’s evidence that the market didn’t validate their subscription value.
What they call “superior content” may well be high quality, but it wasn’t indispensable enough for most people to pay for. Instead, they built a model dependent on Google discovery, hoping exposure would translate to loyalty. The weak subscription base suggests it didn’t.
That doesn’t mean their journalism has no value. It means their chosen model — free access subsidized by traffic arbitrage — was fragile. And fragility is not antitrust injury.
The Ozzy Example
PMC points to a Rolling Stone article on Ozzy Osbourne as proof of harm. On desktop, the piece ranks #2, but users first see Wikipedia at #1. On mobile, an AI Overview answers the query directly, citing seven other sources but not Rolling Stone. In both cases, Rolling Stone’s article is available — but only after wading through subscription gates, pop-ups, and ads.
What did the user want with the query “The Real Ozzy Osbourne”? If the goal was to know who he really was, Wikipedia and the AI Overview sufficed. If the goal was to read a personal reflection by a journalist with unique access, Rolling Stone provided that — for a price.
The issue is not that Google misappropriated exclusive reporting; it’s that most users don’t find the paid or ad-laden experience compelling enough to choose it.
It reveals the pivot trap. PMC argues that affiliate commissions and ad revenue fund quality journalism. But the very dependency on these monetization models shows how fragile their position is. They are trying to defend affiliate arbitrage as if it were cultural reporting — and the Ozzy query shows the difference.
The Earbuds Example
PMC also cites Rolling Stone’s affiliate review of “The Best Sounding Wireless Earbuds of 2025” as proof of harm. On desktop, the query shows Rolling Stone alongside many competitors — CNET, Forbes, PC Magazine, TechRadar. There is no AI Overview. On mobile, an AI Overview appears, but it cites four of those competitors, not Rolling Stone. Below the AI block, Rolling Stone still appears in the organic listings.
The harm, then, is not that Google stole unique journalism. It’s that users didn’t choose Rolling Stone’s affiliate review over CNET’s or Forbes’. The problem isn’t appropriation — it’s substitution in a saturated marketplace.
By holding up an earbuds affiliate roundup as an example of “content theft,” PMC reveals the fragility of its pivot. The business model depends on winning the SEO race for commodity reviews, not on the uniqueness of its journalism. What they call an existential threat looks more like intensified competition.
Sidebar: Jurisdiction vs. Reality
In all of my contract law courses, the professors hammered governing law and jurisdiction as two key elements of any agreement. That lens made me pause at how PMC chose to establish jurisdiction here.
PMC anchors its case in Washington, D.C., arguing that Google’s misconduct occurred there because:
- Google is registered to do business in D.C.
- It employs engineers and marketing staff for AI products in local offices.
- D.C. residents consume Google’s “republished” content.
On paper, this satisfies the “purposeful availment” requirement. But the technical reality tells a different story:
- Googlebot requests originate from distributed data centers, managed mainly from California.
- Publishers like PMC serve their content from global CDNs (Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly), meaning the “taking” happens wherever the nearest node is — not in D.C.
- No act of crawling, indexing, or snippet extraction is physically tied to the District.
What PMC casts as misconduct “in D.C.” is really the byproduct of a global protocol — automated requests moving over TCP/IP from servers and CDNs that rarely touch Washington at all. The jurisdiction claim isn’t false, but it’s more rhetorical than literal.
Sidebar: Why a Jury Trial?
PMC also demands a jury trial, which is notable in an antitrust case of this complexity. Antitrust cases are often decided by judges who can parse complex technical markets and apply relevant precedents. A jury trial, by contrast, is a theater of persuasion.
Why might PMC push for one?
- Narrative power: Juries are more receptive to stories of betrayal than to fine distinctions about crawling protocols.
- Regulatory climate: In D.C., jurors may be more skeptical of Big Tech, influenced by the constant flow of headlines and political rhetoric.
- Leverage: The very prospect of putting Google on trial before a jury raises settlement value.
But there’s a catch: voir dire. Federal juries in D.C. pull from a pool rich with government, regulatory, and policy employees. Many with antitrust or tech expertise would likely be struck for cause. The remaining jury may be sympathetic to “journalism under siege,” but less equipped to parse whether crawling a CDN from California really constitutes “reciprocal dealing.”
Proving the Harm
One of the thinnest parts of PMC’s case is the evidence of harm. To sustain an antitrust claim, they must show not only that Google changed the terms of engagement, but that this change directly suppressed competition or output in ways the law recognizes.
So far, the examples they’ve offered raise questions:
- The Ozzy Osbourne article shows traffic friction, but not theft of unique reporting.
- The Earbuds article highlights lost affiliate commissions, but in a saturated market where competitors are equally affected.
- They lean on generalizations — “traffic is down, revenue is threatened” — but don’t show concrete instances where Google uniquely expropriated content in a way that deprived them of monetization no one else could replicate.
This matters because courts distinguish between lost clicks due to user choice and anticompetitive exclusion. If the loss stems from user preference, weak subscription demand, or affiliate substitution, it may be unfortunate but not unlawful.
Monopoly Then, Monopoly Now
One striking feature of PMC’s complaint is how heavily it leans on the recent ruling in U.S. v. Google, where a federal court found that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in general search. PMC treats this as settled law: Google is a monopoly, therefore its conduct toward publishers must be monopolistic abuse.
But this framing glosses over an uncomfortable irony. For more than a decade, publishers like PMC were direct beneficiaries of that same monopoly. Google’s dominance in search made their pivot possible — tearing down paywalls, chasing SEO exposure, and monetizing clicks at scale through advertising and affiliates. The monopoly wasn’t just tolerated; it was milked.
Now that Google has shifted the mechanics of distribution, the very dominance that once enriched publishers is recast as predatory. In other words:
- Monopoly then: A windfall — free distribution, surging traffic, rising ad revenue.
- Monopoly now: A villain — starving clicks, undercutting referrals, appropriating value.
The problem isn’t just monopoly power. It’s the fragility of building a business that depended on a single channel controlled by that monopoly. No one complained loudly when the traffic flowed in their favor. The outrage came only when the terms of the flow changed.
Perspective from the Industry
For the past 25 years, I’ve spoken at and attended search industry conferences, meeting countless people whose livelihoods were devastated by Google’s algorithmic changes and many who became millionaires by those same algorithms and opportunities.
Most of those harmed were leveraging relevance loopholes or context variations (often in affiliate models) that worked until they didn’t. You empathize with them: some lost businesses, homes, or entire careers. But was it truly Google’s fault that they bet everything on a single tactic?
It’s not so different from investing your life savings in a volatile crypto coin versus a diversified portfolio. Businesses know the rule: never rely on a single customer, channel, or revenue stream. Yet many publishers did just that, assuming the flow of free Google traffic would continue indefinitely.
Yes, Google wields enormous power. I’ve been in this industry for three decades and helped companies generate billions from search marketing. But the shock expressed in this lawsuit stems less from coercion than from misplaced certainty. The traffic was always contingent. The pivot was always fragile.
Conclusion
PMC’s lawsuit against Google presents itself as a defense of journalism, but the underlying arguments reveal fragility. The industry’s pivot from subscriptions to ads and affiliates left it deeply dependent on free Google traffic. When Google altered how that traffic flows — first through snippets, then through AI Overviews — publishers reframed a broken assumption as a broken bargain. I will state it again – the traffic was always contingent. The pivot was always fragile. The bargain was never written.
The examples they cite — from celebrity retrospectives to earbuds buying guides — expose the weakness in their case. What’s at stake is less the theft of unique journalism than the collapse of a traffic funnel optimized for arbitrage.
The courtroom drama may turn on whether jurors accept the publishers’ story of betrayal or recognize the more complicated reality: that the bargain was never written, the pivot was always fragile, and competition, not coercion, may explain much of the loss.
Disclaimer: I do not take sides in this dispute. I’m not advocating for Google or PMC. I’m simply intrigued by the claims in the legal submission and analyzing them critically, with an eye toward how they intersect with the history of publishing, search, and digital business models.
