A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed two antitrust lawsuits that accused Google of using its AI-powered search features to steer traffic away from publishers, according to a ruling reported earlier by Reuters. US District Judge Amit Mehta sided with Google, finding that the claims brought by Chegg and Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of Rolling Stone, did not hold up under antitrust law.
Chegg and PMC filed the suits last year, arguing that Google abused its monopoly power by pressuring publishers to hand over content for its AI Overviews at no cost or risk losing visibility in search results. The publishers said Google's practices pulled traffic away from their sites and cut into their revenue.
Judge Mehta rejected that argument. He wrote that the plaintiffs had shown only that they expected Google to send them search traffic in exchange for making their content available for free, and that an expectation does not amount to an agreement. He described that arrangement as simply how a general search engine operates.
The judge also said the court is not unsympathetic to the position publishers are in, but he wrote that antitrust rules cannot take the place of a legislative body's decision to address the economic effects of new innovation. Mehta issued a landmark antitrust ruling against Google in 2024.
The dismissal comes as publishers continue to absorb the fallout from Google's AI-driven overhaul of search, with traffic to news outlets and smaller websites dropping sharply. This week, The Information reported that Google is paying roughly 100 publishers for their contributions to AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini as part of a pilot program.
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