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Google Asks Judge to Reject Media Company Claims Over AI Search Overviews

By  |  January 14, 2026

Google has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit brought by Penske Media Corp, the publisher of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, arguing that the case has no legal basis, according to Reuters.

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    In a filing submitted Monday in federal district court in Washington, Google and its parent company Alphabet urged the court to dismiss the complaint, calling it fundamentally flawed. Per Reuters, Penske Media sued the technology company last year, accusing it of violating antitrust law by allegedly forcing publishers to permit AI-generated summaries of their content in Google search results in order to remain indexed.

    The lawsuit centers on Google’s use of artificial intelligence to generate overviews that appear at the top of some search results. Penske Media claims those summaries reduce traffic to publishers’ websites, cutting into advertising revenue that supports journalism across its portfolio. According to Reuters, Penske operates more than 25 print and digital brands and says it depends heavily on referrals from Google search.

    Penske also argues that in a competitive market, Google would compensate publishers for republishing their content or for using it to train artificial intelligence systems, per Reuters.

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    Google rejected those claims in its court filing, maintaining that its AI overviews are simply part of its existing search product, not a separate service. The company said users can still click through to publishers’ websites from search results. According to Reuters, Google also emphasized that it has no obligation to index content on terms dictated by publishers.

    “In PMC’s preferred world, Google Search must be frozen in time, requiring users to speculatively visit websites like PMC’s to access their desired information — if it is found there at all,” Google told the court.

    Google further argued that publishers are free to block their content from being indexed entirely and that the company does not guarantee any level of referral traffic for sites that appear in search results, per Reuters.

    Neither Google nor Penske Media immediately responded to requests for comment, according to Reuters. The dispute comes as Google faces growing legal pressure over its business practices. The company is already defending itself against two antitrust lawsuits brought by the U.S. government related to its search and advertising operations. Media companies, including Penske, have also filed separate cases challenging Google’s advertising technology business.

    The Penske lawsuit is one of several legal challenges targeting Google’s use of AI in search. Reuters reported that online education company Chegg has also filed a separate lawsuit over the impact of AI-generated overviews on its traffic.

    The case is titled Penske Media Corp et al v. Google and Alphabet and is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

    Source: Reuters