Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust suits over Google AI search
The ruling removes one legal challenge to Google’s AI Overviews and related search features.
A US federal judge has thrown out antitrust suits from Chegg and Penske Media over Google’s AI search features, a ruling that reduces one legal threat to the company’s AI Overviews and related products. Judge Amit Mehta said the complaints did not establish that Google’s conduct violated antitrust law, even though the publishers argued that AI answers were siphoning traffic from their sites. Chegg said Google scraped its educational material and let Gemini-based systems reproduce it, while Penske said sites could be indexed for search and still have their content used for AI responses without an opt-out. The cases were filed in 2025, and Google had asked for dismissal earlier this year.
Why it matters
For publishers, the decision leaves Google’s AI search products in place without these antitrust claims changing how they work. Chegg and Penske had argued that AI answers were taking traffic from their sites and using their content in ways they could not avoid, but the court found that did not amount to an antitrust violation. That narrows one avenue for challenging how Google uses publisher material in AI responses.
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Sources
- Ars Technica