Judge dismisses AI search antitrust lawsuits against Google

US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the legal challenges brought by education platform Chegg and publisher Penske Media, which owns Rolling Stone and Variety. The plaintiffs, who filed their suits in 2025, argued that Google's practice of harvesting their content to generate AI search summaries and train its Gemini models constituted an antitrust violation. They claimed this practice diverted organic search traffic away from their websites without offering a way to opt out of AI scraping while remaining indexed in standard search results.

Judge Mehta rejected these arguments, clarifying that the standard relationship between search engines and websites does not constitute a binding legal contract. He wrote that the plaintiffs merely had an expectation of receiving traffic in exchange for providing free content, but noted that "an expectation is not an agreement." Because no formal agreement existed between Google and the publishers, the court found that antitrust laws do not apply to this scenario.

While the ruling favors Google, Judge Mehta expressed sympathy for the publishers, acknowledging the economic hardships faced by journalists, educators, and creators whose work is repurposed without compensation. However, he emphasized that courts must apply the law as written rather than trying to correct perceived economic unfairness, which is a task for lawmakers. This decision highlights the difficulty publishers face in US courts when challenging AI search practices without new legislative protections.

The legal landscape remains different outside the United States. The European Commission is currently investigating similar issues regarding big tech data scraping, and the United Kingdom has already mandated that Google offer websites an AI opt-out mechanism while preserving their organic search presence. Meanwhile, Google's internal efforts to resolve these tensions through a pilot program that pays publishers directly for AI content have reportedly struggled to gain traction.