A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by education technology company Chegg and Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, that accused Google's AI Overviews of draining their audiences and revenue.
US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the publishers' claims did not establish violations of federal antitrust law. In a 41-page memorandum opinion dated September 30 covering both lawsuits, he found that neither company convincingly argued Google was leveraging its search monopoly to obtain free material for its AI features or to gain an unfair advantage in digital publishing.
The lawsuits, filed last year, alleged that Google gave publishers an effective choice: allow their content to be used in AI-generated summaries without payment, or risk diminished visibility in search results. The publishers said the AI summaries answer readers' questions directly on Google's own page, cutting the clicks that fund their advertising and affiliate businesses.
Mehta rejected the central theory. "Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free," he wrote. "But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."
The court also rejected Penske's claim that Google illegally tied AI Overviews to its search engine, finding the publisher had not plausibly shown the two are separate products under antitrust law. The proposed publishing markets did not hold up either: the court found the companies lacked antitrust standing in general search because they operate downstream of Google, and had not shown a dangerous probability that Google could monopolize online publishing.
Mehta, who in 2024 ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in online search, acknowledged the publishers' position. "Nor is it unsympathetic to the situation publishers now find themselves in, and the knock-on consequences to journalists, educators, and other online creators whose content Google takes and repurposes without compensation," he wrote. But he added that antitrust law cannot be applied in place of legislative action simply because a practice seems unfair.
The traffic concerns cited in the case are supported by emerging data. According to a study of real browsing behavior reported by Technology.org, users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional search result on just 8% of those search pages, compared with 15% on pages without a summary, while links inside the summaries drew clicks only 1% of the time. Google says AI Overviews now reach more than 2.5 billion monthly users, so even small shifts in behavior can move large sums of advertising money.
Google has separately begun a pilot program paying roughly 100 publishers for contributions to AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini, though the program has reportedly not been going over well with publishers.
The ruling closes one legal route for publishers, but not all of them. Copyright claims against Google over AI training remain pending from other publishers, including Hachette, Cengage and Elsevier, and regulators in the UK and European Union continue to examine similar questions.
What is confirmed: the dismissal of both antitrust suits, the court's reasoning that an expectation of traffic is not an agreement, and the judge's acknowledgment of economic pressure on publishers. What remains unknown: whether Chegg or Penske will appeal, and how either company will respond publicly — both have not yet commented on the ruling. What is awaited: further legislative or regulatory action on AI search and publisher compensation, which the court indicated is the appropriate venue for these disputes.