Publishers shift AI ire to Google

Driving the news: Rolling Stone publisher Penske Media Corporation on Friday sued Google, alleging the company illegally uses its journalism to power AI summaries and reduces traffic to its sites.

• People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel last week called Google an "intentional bad actor" by having the same bot crawl sites for its search engine and its AI features while speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference.
• Google may not feel required to strike publisher deals because of its market position, Vogel and other media executives stressed Monday while speaking at Condé Nast's office for Wired's AI Power Summit.

Zoom in: "Given Google's scale, size and market condition, they need to come to a place of playing ball," Vogel said Monday. "They are using all of their tools to ensure we do not get leverage."

• Vogel said publishers blocking AI scrapers with Cloudflare has sparked more calls from AI companies. Except that's not the case with Google.
• "Maybe because they don't have to," Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff said. "This is not my opinion, other cases have found they have a dominant position."

Reality check: Google's massive win earlier this month — avoiding major penalties as part of a landmark Justice Department antitrust lawsuit — lessens pressure on the tech giant to avoid further scrutiny by striking publisher deals.

The other side: Google has suggested AI overviews makes the search experience better and send higher quality traffic to more sites. Google's vice president of government affairs and public policy Markham Erickson addressed dealmaking on a separate panel at Wired's event.

• "This tension between fair use and exclusive rights actually encourages conversation and encourages parties to get together to have deals. We at Google, we've started to do that," he said.
• Asked about the Penske lawsuit, Erickson said he couldn't address specifics but emphasized Google's goal for a "healthy ecosystem" and noted users' increasing desire for "contextual answers and summaries."

Yes, but: Gannett CEO Mike Reed disputed Erickson's remarks from the earlier panel.

• "The insinuation this morning that AI overview is not getting in the way of the 10 blue links and the traffic going back to creators and publishers is just 100% false," Reed said.
• "[Google said] 'we are sending more qualified audience than ever to publishers,' and that's just simply not true," Bankoff said. "The irony is we have Google Analytics that shows us that the traffic is less engaged, spending less time on the site and there's a lot less of it. We need to have good faith conversation."

Between the lines: Lacking any real legal threats, Google to-date has signed only a few strategic AI partnerships with publishers.

• Google said its deal with the AP, announced in January, provides a "feed of real-time information" for its Gemini app.
• The Reddit deal, signed in 2024, gave Google access to the social media platform's content for training and is reportedly worth about $60 million per year.

The big picture: Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said he sees value in licensing deals but warned they may not be enough if the courts consider AI companies' actions to be "fair use."

• "Most of us are involved in lawsuits right now with some of these tech companies," Lynch said. "If this industry loses those cases, I don't expect there will be renewal on those deals. ... We may get some money for a while, and then be left out to dry."
• Publishers have feared history could repeat itself in the AI era. Deals with social media platforms like Facebook once promised new revenue and traffic but ultimately left them too dependent.
• "One of the lessons from the age of social media is that whoever controls the platform controls the audience and its market," Condé Nast chief content officer Anna Wintour said Monday. "It is crucial through the waves of coming change to hold on to our voice and our fair share."