Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust suits over Google's AI Overviews

Judge sides with Google in AI Overviews dispute

US District Judge Amit Mehta has dismissed a pair of antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of Rolling Stone, which accused Google of using its AI-powered search features to drive away their traffic. According to The Verge, which cited an earlier Reuters report, Mehta ruled in Google's favor on Wednesday, finding that the publishers' claims do not hold up under antitrust law.

The lawsuits, filed last year, centered on AI Overviews, Google's AI-generated summaries that answer user queries directly on the search results page. Chegg and PMC argued that Google abused its monopoly position by coercing publishers into supplying the content that feeds those summaries for free, with the implied alternative being disappearance from search results. The publishers said this arrangement diverted users away from their sites and damaged their revenue.

An expectation, not an agreement

Mehta's ruling rejected the central premise of the complaints. As quoted by The Verge, the judge wrote that the plaintiffs "have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free," adding that "an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."

The decision is notable in part because of who wrote it. Mehta previously issued a landmark 2024 antitrust ruling against Google in a separate case, a judgment widely viewed as a major legal setback for the company. In this dispute, however, he found the publishers' theory of harm outside the reach of existing competition law.

Mehta also acknowledged the publishers' broader predicament, writing that the court is not "unsympathetic to the situation publishers now find themselves in." But he argued that antitrust rules cannot substitute for a legislative body deciding how to address the economic impact of what he described as "new innovation" — effectively directing publishers toward lawmakers rather than the courts.

Publishers keep losing traffic

The ruling lands amid continued strain on publisher traffic. According to The Verge, visits to news outlets and smaller websites have fallen steeply as Google's AI search overhaul answers more queries without users clicking through to the original source.

At the same time, The Verge points to a report from The Information this week saying that Google is paying around 100 publishers for their contributions to AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini as part of a pilot program. That arrangement suggests Google sees value in compensating at least some content suppliers, even as the dismissed lawsuits sought a far broader remedy. The Verge also disclosed that it is itself part of Penske Media, one of the plaintiffs.

Why it matters

The dismissal is one of the clearest signals yet about how US courts will handle AI-era search disputes. Mehta's reasoning — that publishers have no enforceable claim to search traffic simply because they have historically received it — closes off, for now, one of the main legal avenues for publishers seeking redress as AI summaries replace the click-through search results their businesses were built on. Unless an appeals court reverses the decision or Congress intervenes, publishers negotiating with Google over AI-generated answers do so with little antitrust leverage. The fight over who profits when machines summarize the web now shifts from the courtroom to the legislature, while traffic declines continue to bite in the meantime.