Judge Amit Mehta dismissed both antitrust suits, ruling publishers' expectation of traffic is not a legally enforceable agreement
Following·New·first covered 1 Oct 2026·2 sources
Judge Mehta Dismisses Chegg and Penske Antitrust Suits Over Google AI Overviews
The gist
The ruling establishes that the informal arrangement between publishers and Google, where crawling access was understood to yield referral traffic, carries no legal weight as a contract. Publishers seeking to challenge AI search products on antitrust grounds face a standing problem if their losses fall outside the search market itself.
The full picture
US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media (owner of Rolling Stone and Variety) against Google over its AI Overviews feature. Chegg alleged Google illegally scraped its educational content to power Gemini models, reducing site traffic. Penske claimed content indexed for organic search was harvested for AI answers with no opt-out mechanism. The judge ruled that websites' expectation of receiving traffic in exchange for making content available does not constitute a legally enforceable agreement with Google. Both lawsuits were originally filed in 2025 and Google had sought dismissal earlier in 2026. The publishers were also found to lack legal standing on Google's search monopoly claims because their subscription and licensing fee losses occur in different markets from search.
How it developed
Sources
Rohan Paul Twitter
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