Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust lawsuits targeting Google AI search

Ars Technica reports U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed 2025 lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media accusing Google of antitrust violations tied to AI Overviews and related AI search. Chegg alleged scraping that let Gemini recreate educational content and kill traffic; Penske alleged indexed sites had content harvested for AI answers with no opt-out.

Mehta wrote that an “expectation” of search traffic in exchange for free content is not an agreement — “It is simply how a general search engine works.” He still said the court is not “unsympathetic” to publishers and creators whose work is “repurpose[d] without compensation,” arguing antitrust cannot stand in for legislation.

This is a hard ruling for the open web and a clarifying one for the law. Mehta already found Google violated antitrust law in the DOJ search case; he still won’t stretch that doctrine into a publisher compensation right for AI answers. We’re sympathetic to the traffic collapse story — and we agree with the judge that feeling unfair isn’t the same as proving a Section 2 agreement.

The policy vacuum is the point. If AI Overviews can vacuum the web and return a paragraph while referrals die, Congress and regulators have to write the opt-out and payment rules. Europe is already chewing on the question; the UK has ordered an AI opt-out that preserves organic search. Google’s pilot paying roughly some publishers, reported elsewhere this week, looks like voluntary triage, not a market fix.

I’m watching whether publishers pivot to copyright and competition claims abroad — and whether U.S. legislation ever catches the “expectation isn’t a contract” gap Mehta named.

Mehta oversaw the landmark DOJ search remedies fight; this dismissal separates monopoly findings in general search from AI-answer free-riding claims.