A federal judge has dismissed a pair of antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Rolling Stone parent company Penske Media Corporation, which accused Google of driving away web traffic with its AI-powered search features, as reported earlier by Reuters. US District Judge Amit Mehta takes Google’s side in a ruling on Wednesday, writing that PMC and Chegg’s claims don’t stand up to antitrust law.
In lawsuits filed last year, Chegg and PMC accused Google of abusing its monopoly power by coercing publishers into supplying content for AI Overviews for free, or risk disappearing from search results. The publishers alleged Google’s practices diverted traffic away from their sites, hurting their revenue.
Judge Mehta, who made a landmark antitrust ruling against Google in 2024, disagrees with Chegg and PMC’s claims. “Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free,” Mehta writes. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.”
Mehta adds that the court is not “unsympathetic to the situation publishers now find themselves in,” but writes that antitrust rules can’t replace a legislative body’s decision to address the economic impact of “new innovation.”
Disclosure: The Verge is part of Penske Media.
Leave a comment