In a newly filed motion to dismiss, Google is asking a federal court in Washington, D.C. to throw out Penske Media Corporation’s antitrust lawsuit in its entirety, arguing that the claims are legally defective, internally inconsistent, and largely copied from an earlier suit brought by education services company Chegg, Inc. According to Google, PMC’s amended complaint does nothing to cure those flaws and instead, reflects PMC’s dissatisfaction with changes to how the search ecosystem now operates.
The Background in Brief: PMC – the parent company of publications like Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, Women’s Wear Daily, and Deadline – filed suit against Google in September 2025, alleging that Google has unlawfully leveraged its dominance in search by using publisher content to power AI-driven search features like AI Overviews, allegedly without compensation or the ability to meaningfully opt out. According to PMC, Google conditions meaningful search visibility on publishers’ willingness to let it use their content for its AI-driven features.
Google’s Push for Dismissal
In a second motion to dismiss, which it filed on January 12, Google rejects PMC’s framing and characterizes the lawsuit as an attempt to use antitrust law to halt advancements in internet search technology, preventing Google from improving its product in ways that reduce publishers’ dependence on click-through traffic.
At the heart of Google’s motion is a basic antitrust principle: absent exceptional circumstances, a company has no obligation to do business on another party’s preferred terms. While PMC contends that Google engages in unlawful “reciprocal dealing” by effectively conditioning search referral traffic on publishers’ consent to the use of their content for AI summaries and training, Google rejects that framing. It maintains that PMC is recharacterizing ordinary product design decisions as anticompetitive conduct. Search traffic is not something it sells or guarantees, Google asserts; it is generated by users’ independent decisions to click on links. And without a transaction, there can be no tying, coercion, or reciprocity, per Google.
Against that background, Google claims that PMC is not challenging exclusionary conduct but objecting to unilateral changes to how search works – an objection that does not give rise to antitrust liability simply because it disrupts a competitor’s business model.
In furtherance of its tying-based antitrust claims, PMC alleges that Google unlawfully integrates AI Overviews into its general search engine in a manner that PMC claims effectively forces their presentation to users. But again Google calls foul, stating that its AI Overviews are not a separate product, a defect that Google says is fatal to PMC’s tying claim, which requires two distinct products. According to Google’s motion, its AI-generated summaries are simply another way of presenting search results, akin to featured snippets or knowledge panels, which courts have previously accepted as lawful product improvements.
Additionally, Google asserts that PMC has failed to allege the necessary coercion or foreclosure to sustain a tying claim, pointing to the fact that users are not required to interact with AI Overviews and that publishers continue to appear elsewhere on the results page and remain free to license their content to others.
No Harm to Competition
Turning to the issue of harm, Google emphasizes the distinction between harm to competitors and harm to competition. Even if PMC’s sites see fewer clicks, Google argues, that does not amount to an antitrust injury. Crucially, the tech giant points out that PMC’s own complaint acknowledges a booming market for AI content licensing, with publishers striking paid deals with multiple AI companies. That admission, according to Google, undermines any claim that Google’s conduct forecloses competition in markets for training data, republishing content, or retrieval-augmented generation.
Beyond that, content is non-rivalrous, Google maintains, arguing that PMC can license the same article to multiple buyers without depletion, and Google’s use of indexed content does not prevent anyone else from doing the same.
With the foregoing in mind, Google is asking the court to dismiss PMC’s amended complaint with prejudice, arguing that the claims fail as a matter of law and cannot be cured through further amendment.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: Not PMC’s only case against Google, the publisher filed another lawsuit, this time alongside its subsidiary SheMedia. The complaint, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Google illegally monopolized the publisher ad-server and ad-exchange markets and unlawfully tied its products, suppressing competition and depressing the prices publishers receive for digital advertising.
The complaint claims Google manipulated real-time ad auctions using insider advantages (such as “Last Look,” “Minimum Bid to Win,” and related schemes), costing publishers like PMC substantial revenue while entrenching Google’s dominance. PMC seeks damages and injunctive relief to restore competition, relying in part on findings from a recent federal court ruling that already held Google engaged in anticompetitive conduct in these same markets.
The case is Penske Media Corporation v. Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., 1:25-cv-03192 (D.D.C.).
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