An Arkansas news publisher is filing a lawsuit against Google for allegedly violating antitrust law. The publisher, Helena World Chronicle, is based in Arkansas and claims that Google uses anticompetitive practices to “siphon off news, readers, and ad revenue” from the publisher. This wouldn’t be the first lawsuit of its kind for Google. It’s been in court twice this year for various alleged antitrust violations.
Back in November, it wrapped up its trial with the US Department of Justice. In that trial, Google was alleged to be running an illegal monopoly with Search, and a ruling will be decided in 2024. More recently it wrapped up its trial with Epic Games. This was another lawsuit where Google was claimed to be running an illegal monopoly and violating antitrust law. This time however it revolved around the Play Store and its in-app payment system. Epic has won this case which caused Google to prepare to submit an appeal. But it’s quite likely Google will have to remedy the situation in some way.
It’s unclear if this new lawsuit will end up going to trial. But it wouldn’t be unlikely given Google’s recent loss against Epic and the other alleged antitrust violations. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in D.C. this week. The lawsuit alleges that Google is “starving the free press” and causing them to lose “billions of dollars” by sharing the content on Google.
For those unaware, this refers to the snippets of content that Google puts in search results. Which can often show the exact information people are searching for. Which in turn can result in a lost visit to the site where Google is taking the content from. Thus, Google keeps the ad revenue and the readership.
The Arkansas antitrust lawsuit alleges Google AI tools worsen the problem
The lawsuit references two different sets of tools Google uses to capture information. The first is Google’s Knowledge Graph tools which it created a little over a decade ago. The Knowledge Graph panels are what you see to the right of search results when you type a query into Google.
The lawsuit’s complaint states “When a user searches for information on a topic, Google displays a ‘Knowledge Panel’ to the right of the search results. This panel contains a summary of content drawn from the Knowledge Graph database,” the complaint states. “Google compiled this massive database by extracting information from Publishers’ websites — what Google calls ‘materials shared across the web’ —and from ‘open source and licensed databases.” The Knowledge Graph however is only part of the issue.
The lawsuit also states Google’s new AI technologies are being used to aid in siphoning the content. It notes that Google’s Search Generative Experience and Bard AI chatbot are being used to “discourage end-users from visiting the websites of Class members who are part of the digital news and publishing line of commerce.”
Part of the claim focuses on SGE’s methods for distributing results to people who search for information. According to the lawsuit, SGE offers up the information people are searching for in a conversational mode. This allows the searcher to not have to click through to the publisher’s website. And in turn, the publisher ends up losing traffic, the lawsuit claims. A report from the Wall Street Journal lays out details of the issue of Google rolling its AI tools into Search. That report notes that publishers are worried these AI tools will cause a decline in traffic of anywhere from 20% to 40%.
The lawsuit wants Google to be required to gain consent to use publisher data to train its AI
It’s too early to tell how the Arkansas antitrust lawsuit will go for Google. However, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google settle. It’s done just that with publishers in Canada and in Germany. The Arkansas lawsuit seeks both damages and an injunction against Google. The injunction, if granted, would require Google to gain consent from publishers to use their data for AI training.
Currently, Google’s Bard AI is claimed to be trained on data from news and media sites. A Washington Post article discovered that news and media were the third largest category being used to train AI. The more that data is used for training, the more likely it is that AI in search results will end up causing more lost traffic. Or at least, that’s the fear publishers have. The lawsuit wants Google to have to ask to use that data. But more importantly, not be punished in search results should it opt-out and refuse to allow the use of it.
These are issues that publishers large and small, national and regional, tend to share. Our own Chris Yackulic shares this sentiment. “The claims made by the company suing Google are concerns that are own publication has with Google and its parent company Alphabet. The anticompetitive behavior violates U.S. antitrust law. Their search AI products and also Gemini AI have news publishers very worried about their revenue models,” Yackulic says.
2023-12-16 15:08:17