US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media against Google over AI search products like AI overviews that have reduced publisher traffic.
Chegg claimed Google illegally scraped educational content for Gemini models. Penske (Rolling Stone, Variety) alleged lost traffic from content harvested for AI answers with no opt-out.
Mehta ruled Google’s implicit agreement with websites is not legally relevant: “Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free. But an expectation is not an agreement.”
Mehta acknowledged harm to publishers but said antitrust law cannot substitute for legislation: “The court is bound to apply the law only as it is written, not how the court or any party believes it ought to be.”
The European Commission is considering similar questions. The UK ordered Google to provide an AI opt-out for sites remaining in organic search. Google’s pilot program to pay sites for AI answers is reportedly not going over well with publishers.