Judge In Penske Vs Google Says AI Situation “Seems Really Unfair”

Google discovered itself pressed by Choose Amit Mehta about whether or not their monopoly place in Search enabled them to take writer content material and use it for AI solutions. The change occurred on Tuesday in a listening to to find out whether or not to grant Google’s request to dismiss Penske Media’s antitrust lawsuit over Google’s AI Overview function.

Choose Mehta is identical decide that beforehand discovered Google to have an unlawful monopoly in Search. The Tuesday listening to centered on whether or not that monopoly discovering offers Penske a viable declare. Penske alleges that Google is utilizing it’s monopoly place to drive publishers to make their content material accessible to Google for AI coaching and solutions.

Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content material Subsequent (DCN), a commerce affiliation that represents digital content material creators, attended the listening to and detailed what occurred in a collection of tweets.

What Google Argued

In response to Kint, Google’s attorneys defined that AI Overviews is a “product enchancment” and described the standard association through which publishers let Google crawl their content material in change for search site visitors as a “obscure historic course of dealing.”

Google’s written filings within the case have argued that AI Overviews is just not a separate product from search and that publishers can at all times decide out of indexing, arguing that Penske’s claims are a requirement for Google to cease the pure evolution of search.

In response to Kint, the Choose Mehta didn’t appear receptive to the way in which Google noticed it.

Kint tweeted:

“Google attorneys repeatedly characterised AI Overviews as a “product enchancment” and known as the historic traffic-for-crawling cut price with publishers a “obscure historic course of dealing.”!!! GTFO. Mehta pushed again: the state of affairs “all appears actually unfair.””

He additional defined:

“Mehta famous publishers lack management over how Google makes use of their content material and described Google’s “product enchancment” as being constructed “on the backs of the publishers.” Importantly, he stated product enhancements “aren’t immune from antitrust scrutiny.””

Google’s Use Of Writer Content material

The decide famous that different AI firms are paying for content material whereas Google is utilizing their search monopoly to ingest the entire web and never pay a single dime for it. This was very attention-grabbing as a result of it offers an thought of the place the decide was leaning.

Kint tweeted:

“Mehta additionally noticed {that a} market is clearly forming for GenAI inputs. Penske pointed to OpenAI and Perplexity as G rivals paying for content material whereas arguing Google makes use of its search monopoly to acquire the identical inputs at zero – elevating rivals’ prices and boundaries to entry. 4/5”

Why Publishers Can’t Say No To Google

Google in truth insists that publishers can decide out of giving their content material to Google for AI coaching. They will now additionally decide out of AI Mode and AI Overviews. But when Google solely reveals AI Overviews then meaning a writer might lose out of no matter crumbs of site visitors AIO sends, which is much lower than the ten blue hyperlinks despatched.

Not Wanting Good For Google

The listening to is one spherical in a case that has been ongoing since September 2025. Mehta has not but dominated on the movement to dismiss. His questions and feedback at Tuesday’s listening to point out that he could also be contemplating whether or not the identical monopoly energy recognized within the 2024 United States v. Google antitrust case might also be at play in how Google can use that dominance to dictate the unfavorable writer/Search relationship phrases.

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