Google Beats Publishers in Court as AI Search Drains Their Traffic
Google Beats Publishers in Court as AI Search Drains Their Traffic
Chegg and Penske Media went to court after Google’s AI search products began changing a bargain that had long underpinned the web: publishers made material available to search engines and, in return, expected readers to arrive through referral links. The companies said Google’s AI Overviews instead used their content to answer queries directly, depressing visits and revenue.
Their cases, filed in 2025, framed the shift as abuse of Google’s search monopoly. Chegg alleged that Google scraped its educational material so Gemini could effectively recreate it; Penske, owner of Rolling Stone and Variety, argued that publishers faced an untenable choice — provide content for AI answers or risk losing visibility in ordinary search.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed both suits. His central conclusion was that the publishers had shown an expectation, not a contractual or legally enforceable arrangement. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works,” Mehta wrote.
That was a decisive legal distinction, but not an endorsement of the status quo. Mehta said the court did not take the claimed harms lightly and was “unsympathetic” neither to publishers nor to the journalists, educators and creators whose work Google allegedly repurposes without compensation. Still, he said courts must apply antitrust law as written rather than use it as a substitute for legislation addressing the economic fallout from innovation.
For Google, the dismissal removes an immediate US antitrust threat to AI search. For publishers, whose traffic has continued to fall, it offers little economic relief. Google has begun a pilot paying roughly 100 publishers for contributions to AI products, but the larger fight over compensation and meaningful opt-outs now appears headed toward lawmakers — and potentially regulators abroad.
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