A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and educational technology firm Chegg, who alleged that Google’s AI Overviews feature unlawfully diverted traffic by repackaging their content. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that neither publisher made a compelling case that Google is leveraging its search monopoly to violate antitrust laws.
In a memorandum opinion released on October 1, Judge Mehta addressed both cases. He noted that while he previously ruled in 2024 that Google maintains a monopoly in online search services, the current complaints lacked sufficient legal grounding. The plaintiffs argued that Google was using its vast web index to pull readers away from their sites, thereby harming their advertising revenue. Chegg additionally claimed that Google was coercing websites into allowing their content to be scraped for AI training or risk exclusion from search results entirely.
However, Judge Mehta found these arguments unconvincing. He wrote that the plaintiffs had only asserted an
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