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A new class action lawsuit filed this week in the U.S. District Court in D.C. accuses Google and parent company Alphabet of anticompetitive behavior in violation of U.S. antitrust law, the Sherman Act, and others, on behalf of news publishers. The case, filed by Arkansas-based publisher Helena World Chronicle, argues that Google \u201csiphons off\u201d news publishers\u2019 content, their readers and ad revenue through anticompetitive means. It also specifically cites new AI technologies like Google\u2019s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and Bard AI chatbot as worsening the problem.<\/p>\n
In the complaint, Helena World Chronicle, which owns and publishes two weekly newspapers in Arkansas, argues that Google is \u201cstarving the free press\u201d by sharing publishers\u2019 content on Google, losing them \u201cbillions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to new AI technologies, the suit points to Google\u2019s older question-and-answer technologies, like the \u201cKnowledge Graph\u201d launched in May 2012, as part of the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a user searches for information on a topic, Google displays a \u2018Knowledge Panel\u2019 to the right of the search results. This panel contains a summary of content drawn from the Knowledge Graph database,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cGoogle compiled this massive database by extracting information from Publishers\u2019 websites \u2014 what Google calls \u2018materials shared across the web\u2019 \u2014and from \u2018open source and licensed databases,’\u201d it says.<\/p>\n
By 2020, the Knowledge Graph had grown<\/a> to 500 billion facts about 5 billion entities. But much of the \u201ccollective intelligence\u201d that Google tapped into was content \u201cmisappropriated from Publishers,\u201d the complaint alleges.<\/p>\n Other Google technologies, like \u201cFeatured Snippets\u201d where Google algorithmically extracts answers from webpages, were also cited as shifting traffic away from publishers\u2019 websites.<\/p>\n More importantly, perhaps, is the suit\u2019s tackling of how AI will impact publishers\u2019 businesses. The problem was recently detailed in a report on Thursday by The Wall Street Journal,<\/a> which led with a shocking statistic. When online magazine The Atlantic modeled what would happen if Google integrated AI into search, it found that 75% of the time the AI would answer the user\u2019s query without requiring a click-through to its website, losing it traffic. This could have a major impact on publishers\u2019 traffic going forward, as Google today drives nearly 40% of their traffic, according to data from Similarweb.<\/p>\n Some publishers are now trying to get ahead of the problem. For example, Axel Springer just this week inked a deal with OpenAI<\/a> to license its news for AI model training. But overall, publishers believe they\u2019ll lose somewhere between 20-40% of their website traffic when Google\u2019s AI products fully roll out, The WSJ\u2019s report noted.<\/p>\n The lawsuit reiterates this concern, claiming that Google\u2019s recent advances in AI-based search were implemented with \u201cthe goal of discouraging end-users from visiting the websites of Class members who are part of the digital news and publishing line of commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n SGE, it argues, offers web searchers a way to seek information in a conversational mode, but ultimately keeps users in Google\u2019s \u201cwalled garden\u201d as it \u201cplagiarizes\u201d their content. Publishers also can\u2019t block SGE because it uses the same web crawler as Google\u2019s general search service, GoogleBot.<\/p>\n Plus, it says Google\u2019s Bard AI was trained on a dataset that included \u201cnews, magazine and digital publications,\u201d citing both a 2023 report<\/a> from the News Media Alliance and a Washington Post article about AI training data<\/a> for reference. (The Post, which worked with researchers at the Allen Institute for AI, had found that News and Media sites were the third largest category of AI training data.)<\/p>\n The case points to other concerns, too, like changing AdSense rates and evidence of improper spoliation of evidence on Google\u2019s part, by its destruction of chat messages \u2014 an issue raised in the recent Epic Games lawsuit against Google over app store antitrust issues, which Epic won<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to damages, the suit is asking for an injunction that would require Google to obtain consent from publishers to use their website data to train its general artificial intelligence products including Google\u2019s own and those of rivals. It also asks Google to allow publishers who opt out of SGE to still show up in Google search results, among other things.<\/p>\n The U.S. lawsuit follows an agreement Google reached last month with the Canadian government<\/a> which would see the search giant paying Canadian media for use of their content. Under the terms of the deal, Google will provide $73.5 million (100 million Canadian dollars) every year to news organizations in the country, with funds distributed based on the news outlets\u2019 headcount. Negotiations with Meta are still unresolved, though Meta began blocking news in Canada in August,<\/a> in light of the pressure to pay for the content under the new Canadian law.<\/p>\n The case also arrives alongside the filing of the U.S. Justice Department\u2019s lawsuit against Google<\/a> for monopolizing digital ad technologies, and references the 2020 Justice Department\u2019s civil antitrust suit<\/a> over search and search advertising (which are different markets from digital ad technologies in the more recent suit).<\/p>\n \u201cThe anticompetitive effects of Google\u2019s scheme cause profound harm to competition, to consumers, to labor, and to a democratic free press,\u201d reads an announcement<\/a> posted to the website of the law firm handling the case, Hausfeld.<\/p>\n \u201cPlaintiff Helena World Chronicle, LLC invokes the Sherman Act and Clayton Act to seek class-wide monetary and injunctive relief to restore and ensure competition for digital news and reference publishing and set up guardrails to preserve a free marketplace of ideas in the new era of artificial intelligence,\u201d it states.<\/p>\n Google has been asked for comment, but one has not yet been provided.<\/p>\n The complaint is available below.<\/p>\n Helena World Chronicle, LLC v. Google LLC and Alphabet Inc<\/a> by TechCrunch<\/a> on Scribd<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n