Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust lawsuits over Google AI search

A US federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits that Chegg and Penske Media Corporation filed against Google over its AI search features. In a memorandum opinion covering both cases, US District Judge Amit Mehta found that Google's conduct does not violate antitrust law, Reuters reported.

What the companies claimed

Chegg, an education technology company, sued in 2025, claiming that Google illegally scraped its educational content. That, it said, allowed Gemini models to essentially recreate the same material and cut traffic to its site. Penske Media, whose titles include Rolling Stone and Variety, filed a similar complaint: it argued it was unfair that content indexed for organic search was also harvested for AI answers with no way to opt out. According to the publisher, the practice reduced its traffic and advertising revenue.

Why the judge dismissed the cases

Mehta ruled that Google never had a formal arrangement with either company, so antitrust law does not apply here. "Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free," the judge wrote. "But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."

In the ruling, Mehta also acknowledged where publishers stand: "The court does not treat Plaintiffs' alleged harms lightly," he wrote, and said he is not unsympathetic to the situation publishers are in. He added that he understands the knock-on consequences for journalists, educators and other online creators whose content Google takes and repurposes without compensation. Still, he concluded that a court must apply the law as written, not as anyone believes it ought to be.

Mehta is the same judge who ruled in 2024, in the US Department of Justice case, that Google maintained a monopoly in online search. The government did not win the sweeping penalties it sought, including a forced sale of Chrome.

What comes next

More legal fights over Google's AI search are expected, but they face an uphill battle in US courts without new legislation, and lawmakers have been slow to adapt to the AI era. Publishers may have better odds abroad: the European Commission is examining the same questions, and the UK has ordered Google to let publishers who want to stay in traditional search results opt out of AI features.

As Engadget notes, sites can already exclude pages from AI Overviews, but with AI answers taking up more of the results page, that compromise satisfies few publishers. Google has also started a pilot that pays a small number of sites for their contributions to AI Overviews, though the amounts reported so far have disappointed participants.

Sources: Ars Technica · Engadget