Court Throws Out Antitrust Cases Against Google’s AI Overviews

A federal judge has thrown out two antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and the parent company of Rolling Stone, which claimed that Google’s AI-driven search features were siphoning off web traffic. US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in favor of Google, stating that the arguments presented by Chegg and the parent company do not hold up under antitrust law.

In their lawsuits filed last year, Chegg and the parent company alleged that Google was misusing its dominant market position by pressuring publishers to provide content for AI Overviews without compensation, or risk being excluded from search results. They argued that this practice was diverting traffic from their sites and negatively impacting their revenue.

Judge Mehta, who previously issued a significant antitrust ruling against Google in 2024, disagreed with the claims made by Chegg and the parent company. He noted, “Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free. But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.”

While acknowledging the challenges publishers face, Mehta emphasized that antitrust laws cannot substitute for legislative action to address the economic consequences of “new innovation.”

In the meantime, publishers are still feeling the impact of Google’s AI-enhanced search changes, with many news outlets and smaller websites experiencing a significant drop in traffic. Recently, it was reported that Google is compensating around 100 publishers for their contributions to AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini as part of a pilot initiative.