A federal judge dismissed a pair of antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and rolling stone parent company Penske Media Corporation, which accused Google of driving away web traffic with its AI-powered search features, as previously reported Reuters. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sides with Google in a ruling Wednesday, writing that PMC and Chegg’s claims do not stand up to antitrust law.
In lawsuits filed last year, Chegg and PMC accused Google of abusing its monopoly power by forcing publishers to supply content for AI Overviews for free, or risk disappearing from search results. The publishers alleged that Google’s practices diverted traffic from their sites, harming their revenue.
Judge Mehta, who issued a landmark antitrust ruling against Google in 2024, disagrees with Chegg and PMC’s claims. “Plaintiffs have only alleged that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free,” Mehta writes. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It’s just how a general search engine works.”
Mehta adds that the court is “not indifferent to the situation in which publishers now find themselves,” but writes that antitrust rules cannot replace a legislative body’s decision to address the economic impact of “new innovation.”
Divulgation: The edge is part of Penske Media.
