Judge Dismisses 2 Google AI Search Antitrust Suits as Publishers Fail to Show Formal Deal
Updated
Updated · Ars Technica · Oct 1
Judge Dismisses 2 Google AI Search Antitrust Suits as Publishers Fail to Show Formal Deal
3 articles · Updated · Ars Technica · Oct 1
Summary
US District Judge Amit Mehta threw out antitrust cases from Chegg and Penske Media, ruling Google’s AI search features did not violate antitrust law.
Mehta said both publishers showed only an expectation of search traffic, not a formal agreement requiring Google to send visitors in exchange for indexing their content.
Chegg had argued Google scraped its educational material so Gemini could recreate it, while Penske said sites indexed for organic search were also harvested for AI answers without an opt-out.
The ruling is a setback for publishers that say AI overviews are cutting traffic, even though Mehta previously found Google broke antitrust law in the Justice Department’s separate search monopoly case.