Local Publisher Sues Google, Claims AI Tools Cost Readers and Revenue

On December 12, 2025, Helena World Chronicle, LLC, the publisher of local newspapers serving Helena and Phillips County, filed an antitrust class action in U.S. federal court against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. The complaint alleges violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Act, claiming Google used its dominance in search and related services to extract publishers material, siphon traffic and advertising revenue, and amplify those harms through new AI products.

The filing centers on technology that converts publisher content into machine readable knowledge, specifically citing Google s Knowledge Graph and its answer generation features including Search Generative Experience and Bard. The complaint contends those features reduce direct visits to publisher websites, undermining the economics of ad supported local news and injuring competition, consumers and the press. Plaintiffs seek class wide monetary damages and injunctive relief, including structural measures to restore competition and an opt out mechanism to prevent publisher content from being incorporated into AI answer features.

Google responded to the litigation by calling the suit "meritless" and stressing that people can access news through many channels and that Google drives significant traffic to publishers websites. The company s position will be tested in court alongside the factual and economic claims in the complaint.

For residents of Phillips County the case is notable because a local publisher has become the named plaintiff in national litigation over how large AI platforms handle news content. Local newsrooms in the region rely on digital traffic and advertising to fund reporting on schools, courts and local government. If the suit proceeds and wins remedies, it could restore bargaining leverage for publishers and change how online platforms display and monetize news. If it fails, publishers may face continued pressure on revenue models already strained by multi year declines in local ad support.

The litigation also arrives as policymakers and courts globally reassess Big Tech relationships with news media, and as some jurisdictions have negotiated payments between platforms and media organizations. The next steps will be pretrial motions and discovery that could clarify the scale of alleged harm and the economic pathways by which AI features affect local news revenues.