Google is defending its AI Overviews right as a major publisher sues, and the company’s on-the-record stance is eyebrow-raising: users increasingly prefer quick, contextual summaries over the old “10 blue links.”

That line—delivered by Google policy executive Markham Erickson—landed the same day fresh legal heat arrived from Penske Media, the owner of Rolling Stone and Variety.

Penske Media filed suit in Washington, D.C., alleging Google’s AI Overviews lift its journalism to generate answers that reduce clicks, revenue, and leverage—an existential problem for outlets built on search referrals.

The complaint frames a stark choice: let Google reuse your reporting for summaries, or block crawling and vanish from search.

Search Engine Land’s report lays out claims of traffic declines, affiliate revenue hits, and the power imbalance at the center of modern search.

A separate write-up at TechCrunch underscores why this case matters: it’s the first big-name U.S. publisher targeting Google specifically over AI summaries, not just scraping or training.

The lawsuit argues Google is changing the bargain of the open web—crawl access used to equal traffic; now summaries can short-circuit the click.

Google’s counter-narrative hinges on behavior change. At WIRED’s AI Power Summit, Erickson said people want “contextual answers and summaries,” and Google aims to serve that and keep a “healthy ecosystem.”

The framing—summaries coexist with links—echoes coverage in The Verge, which captured the tension: evolve the results page without starving the sources.

That tension isn’t happening in a vacuum. In the same seven-day news window, book-end lawsuits hit another answer engine: Britannica and Merriam-Webster sued Perplexity, accusing it of copying definitions and misusing trademarks.

The legal thrust is similar—who gets paid when “answers” replace clicks? Reuters’ write-up shows courts will be central to where AI search lands next.

Google, meanwhile, has quietly been tuning the quality bar for AI-inflected results.

A mid-September refresh to its Search Quality Raters Guidelines added examples for judging AI Overviews and clarified YMYL (your money/your life) areas—signals, if not ranking rules, for how the company evaluates answer-style content. Search Engine Land’s coverage pegs the update to September 11.

And because a single source never tells the whole story, here’s the reporting that sparked today’s conversation: 9to5Google’s piece captured Erickson’s quotes and the timing with Penske’s lawsuit, making the juxtaposition hard to miss—Google’s philosophy talk versus publishers’ existential math.

What I heard between the lines (brief dialogue—because search is a conversation)

Q: Are users really switching from links to summaries, or did the product nudge them there?
A: Probably both. Google has optimized the page around instant answers for years; it would be shocking if behavior hadn’t shifted. The company’s pledge to “drive people back to valuable content” only works if the summaries actually send traffic.

Q: What changes for SEOs and newsrooms this week, practically?
A: Treat “answer readiness” as a first-class requirement (concise claims, citable facts, schema) while you diversify beyond Google. If courts pressure licensing, the economics may rebalance; until then, structure your content so it’s the obvious citation in an Overview.

Q: What’s the near-term risk?
A: Policy drift. Raters guidelines keep evolving around Overviews; publishers will test more lawsuits; Google will keep saying the ecosystem stays healthy. The operational truth lives in your analytics.

Additional context that wasn’t in every headline

• The Penske case sits inside a broader shift: a growing cluster of suits against AI “answer engines,” from Perplexity to (previously) OpenAI, over use of copyrighted material and attribution. That legal front will decide whether summaries become a licensed format or a fair-use battleground. Another Verge brief helps map the stakes for media.
• The industry forum where Erickson spoke—WIRED’s AI Power Summit—also featured media CEOs describing sharp traffic hits since AI summaries rose to prominence. The event agenda confirms the players and the focus areas.

Reporter’s notebook (opinion, briefly)

The headline fight isn’t “AI vs. publishers.” It’s distribution vs. compensation. If “users want summaries,” search engines must prove—publicly—that summaries still send meaningful, measurable traffic.

Otherwise, the open web becomes a supplier without a storefront. That’s not cynicism; it’s the simple unit economics of journalism meeting an answer box.

My read: summaries are here to stay, but the money flow has to catch up—or the lawsuits will.

Origianl Creator: Mark Borg
Original Link: https://ai2people.com/summaries-vs-blue-links-googles-ai-overviews-face-new-lawsuit-and-a-bigger-question-about-what-users-really-want/
Originally Posted: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:57:15 +0000