The owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety sued Google on Friday, alleging the technology giant's AI summaries use its journalism without consent and reduce traffic to its websites. The lawsuit by Penske Media in federal court in Washington, D.C., marks the first time a major U.S. publisher has taken Alphabet-owned Google to court over the AI-generated summaries that now appear on top of its search results.
The decision allows Google to keep Chrome but prohibits exclusive agreements across its core products, including Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and its Gemini AI app. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued Google had maintained its near 90% share of U.S. search queries through exclusionary tactics. In a statement, the DOJ said Google used agreements to lock itself in as the " preset default general search engine on billions of mobile devices and computers. "