TL;DR:
- Helena World Chronicle files class action antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging anticompetitive behavior.
- The lawsuit cites Google’s use of AI, including SGE and Bard AI, as contributing to the problem.
- Google’s Knowledge Graph and Featured Snippets were also highlighted as concerns.
- AI integration in Google’s search could result in a significant loss of website traffic for publishers.
- Publishers may lose between 20-40% of their website traffic with Google’s AI products fully deployed.
- The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction requiring consent for AI use and allowing opt-outs.
- Google’s agreement with the Canadian government to compensate Canadian media was noted.
- U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuits against Google in related areas mentioned.
Main AI News:
In a significant legal development, a prominent news publisher, Helena World Chronicle, has taken legal action against tech giant Google and its parent company, Alphabet, by filing a class action antitrust lawsuit. This lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleges that Google’s actions constitute anticompetitive behavior and violations of U.S. antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act. The plaintiff contends that Google’s practices have detrimental effects on news publishers, causing financial harm to their operations.
Helena World Chronicle, which owns and operates two weekly newspapers in Arkansas, asserts that Google engages in practices that divert news publishers’ content, readership, and advertising revenue through anticompetitive means. The lawsuit specifically highlights the role of emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and Bard AI chatbot, in exacerbating this issue.
The complaint filed by Helena World Chronicle argues that Google’s actions effectively undermine the free press, resulting in substantial financial losses for news publishers, potentially amounting to billions of dollars. Additionally, the lawsuit draws attention to Google’s older technologies, like the “Knowledge Graph,” which was introduced in May 2012. This Knowledge Graph draws information from publishers’ websites and other sources, contributing to its extensive database, which the lawsuit claims includes content inappropriately taken from publishers.
Moreover, the suit points to Google’s “Featured Snippets” feature, where Google algorithmically extracts answers from webpages, as another practice diverting traffic away from publishers’ websites. The suit underscores the critical issue of how AI will impact publishers’ businesses, highlighting a recent report by The Wall Street Journal. This report reveals that integrating AI into Google’s search could lead to 75% of user queries being answered without requiring a visit to the publishers’ websites, significantly reducing their web traffic. Given that Google currently drives nearly 40% of publishers’ traffic, this could have a profound impact on their operations.
Publishers are now proactively seeking ways to address this challenge. For example, Axel Springer recently entered into an agreement with OpenAI to license its news for AI model training. However, it is estimated that publishers may still experience a loss of 20-40% of their website traffic once Google’s AI products are fully deployed.
The lawsuit emphasizes that Google’s recent advancements in AI-based search are designed to discourage users from visiting publishers’ websites and keep them within Google’s ecosystem, thereby “plagiarizing” their content. Publishers face challenges in blocking SGE since it utilizes the same web crawler as Google’s general search service, GoogleBot. Additionally, Bard AI was trained on a dataset that included various news and digital publications, further exacerbating the issue.
The case also raises concerns about changing AdSense rates and allegations of improper evidence spoliation by Google, citing the destruction of chat messages, a matter previously raised in the Epic Games lawsuit over app store antitrust issues.
In addition to seeking damages, the lawsuit seeks an injunction requiring Google to obtain consent from publishers to use their website data for training its general artificial intelligence products, including those of its rivals. It also calls for Google to allow publishers who opt out of SGE to still appear in Google search results, among other remedies.
This U.S. lawsuit comes in the wake of Google’s agreement with the Canadian government, which entails compensation to Canadian media for the use of their content. The agreement involves Google providing $73.5 million (100 million Canadian dollars) annually to news organizations in Canada. Negotiations with Meta regarding similar issues remain ongoing.
Furthermore, this case coincides with the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google for monopolistic practices in digital ad technologies. It also references the 2020 Justice Department’s civil antitrust suit related to search and search advertising, distinct from the more recent digital ad technologies suit.
The law firm handling the case, Hausfeld, declares, “The anticompetitive effects of Google’s scheme cause profound harm to competition, to consumers, to labor, and to a democratic free press.” Plaintiff Helena World Chronicle, LLC, seeks class-wide monetary and injunctive relief to restore competition in digital news and reference publishing and safeguard the marketplace of ideas in the era of artificial intelligence, invoking the Sherman Act and Clayton Act to achieve these objectives.
Conclusion:
The class action lawsuit against Google by Helena World Chronicle underscores the growing concern within the market about the impact of Google’s AI practices on news publishers. As AI integration into search threatens to divert substantial website traffic away from publishers, it becomes imperative for publishers to seek alternative strategies and partnerships to mitigate potential losses. Additionally, regulatory actions by governments, such as the Canadian agreement, indicate a shifting landscape in the digital media market, where compensation for content usage is becoming a central issue. Publishers should closely monitor these developments and adapt their business models to navigate the evolving AI-driven digital media landscape.
