Penske Media Corporation (PMC) filed a federal court memorandum opposing Google’s motion to dismiss its antitrust lawsuit. The company argues that Google has broken the longstanding premise of a web ecosystem in which publishers allowed their content to be crawled in exchange for receiving search traffic in return.
PMC is the publisher of twenty brands like Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and Rolling Stone.
Web Ecosystem
The PMC legal filing makes repeated references to the “fundamental fair exchange” where Google sends traffic in exchange for allowing them to crawl and index websites, explicitly quoting Google’s expressions of support for “the health of the web ecosystem.”
And yet there are some industry outsiders on social media who deny that there is any understanding between Google and web publishers, a concept that even Google doesn’t deny.
This concept dates to pretty much the beginning of Google and is commonly understood by all web workers. It’s embedded in Google’s Philosophy, expressed at least as far back as 2004:
“Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible.”
In May 2025 Google published a blog post where they affirmed that sending users to websites remained their core goal:
“…our core goal remains the same: to help people find outstanding, original content that adds unique value.”
What’s relevant about that passage is that it’s framed within the context of encouraging publishers to create high quality content and in exchange they will be considered for referral traffic.
The concept of a web ecosystem where both sides benefit was discussed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a June 2025 podcast interview by Lex Fridman where Pichai said that sending people to the human created web in AI Mode was “going to be a core design principle for us.”
In response to a follow-up question referring to journalists who are nervous about web referrals, Sundar Pichai explicitly mentioned the ecosystem and Google’s commitment to it.
Pichai responded:
“I think news and journalism will play an important role, you know, in the future we’re pretty committed to it, right? And so I think making sure that ecosystem… In fact, I think we’ll be able to differentiate ourselves as a company over time because of our commitment there. So it’s something I think you know I definitely value a lot and as we are designing we’ll continue prioritizing approaches.”
This “fundamental fair exchange” serves as the baseline competitive condition for their claims of coercive reciprocal dealing and unlawful monopoly maintenance.
That baseline helps PMC argue:
- That Google changed the understood terms of participation in search in a way publishers cannot refuse.
- And that Google used its dominance in search to impose those new terms.
And despite that Google’s own CEO expressed that sending people to websites is a core design principal and there are multiple instances in the past and the present where Google’s own documentation refers to this reciprocity between publishers and Google, Google’s legal response expressly denies that it exists.
The PMC document states:
“Google …argues that no reciprocity agreement exists because it has not “promised to deliver” any search referral traffic.”
Profound Consequences Of Google AI Search
PMC filed a federal court memorandum in February 2026 opposing Google’s motion to dismiss its antitrust complaint. The complaint details Google’s use of its search monopoly to “coerce” publishers into providing content for AI training and AI Overviews without compensation.
The suit argues that Google has pivoted from being a search engine (that sends traffic to websites) to an answer engine that removes the incentive for users to click to visit a website. The lawsuit claims that this change harms the economic viability of digital publishers.
The filing explains the consequences of this change:
“Google has shattered the longstanding bargain that allows the open internet to exist. The consequences for online publishers—to say nothing of the public at large—are profound.”
Google Is Using Their Market Power
The filing claims that the collapse of the traditional search ecosystem positions Google’s AI search system as coercive rather than innovative, arguing that publishers must either allow AI to reuse their content or risk losing search visibility.
The legal filing alleges that Google’s generative AI competes directly with online publishers for user’s attention, describing Google as cannibalizing publisher’s traffic, specifically alleging that Google is using their “market power” to maintain a situation in which publishers can’t block the AI without also negatively affecting what little search traffic is left.
The memorandum portrays a bleak choice offered by Google:
“Google’s search monopoly leaves publishers with no choice: acquiesce—even as Google cannibalizes the traffic publishers rely on—or perish.”
It also describes the role of AI grounding plays in cannibalizing publisher traffic for its sole benefit:
“Through RAG, or “grounding,” Google uses, repackages, and republishes publisher content for display on Google’s SERP, cannibalizing the traffic on which PMC depends.”
Expansion Of Zero-Click Search Results And Traffic Loss
The filing claims AI answers divert users away from publisher sites and diminish monetizable audience visits. Multiple parts of the filing directly confronts Google with the fact of reduced traffic from search due to the cannibalization of their content.
The filing alleges:
“Google reduces click‑throughs to publisher sites, increases zero‑click behavior, and diverts traffic that publishers need to support their advertising, affiliate, and subscription revenue.
…Google’s insinuation . . . that AI Overview is not getting in the way of the ten blue links and the traffic going back to creators and publishers is just 100% false . . . . [Users] are reading the overview and stopping there . . . . We see it.”
…The purpose is not to facilitate click-throughs but to have users consume PMC’s content, repackaged by Google, directly on the SERP.”
Zero-click searches are described as a component of a multi-part process in which publishers are injured by Google’s conduct. The filing accuses Google of using publisher content for training, grounding their AI on facts, and then republishing it within the zero-click AI search environment that either reduces or eliminates clicks back to PMC’s websites.
Should Google Send More Referral Traffic?
Everything that’s described in the PMC filing is the kind of thing that virtually all online businesses have been complaining about in terms of traffic losses as a result of Google’s AI search surfaces. It’s the reason why Lex Fridman specifically challenged Google’s CEO on the amount of traffic Google is sending to websites.
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