Key facts
- US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed antitrust lawsuits against Google filed by Chegg and Penske Media.
- The lawsuits alleged Google's AI search features, like AI overviews, illegally harvested content and reduced traffic to publishers' sites.
- Judge Mehta ruled that Google's conduct does not violate antitrust law, stating that publishers' expectation of search traffic is not a formal agreement.
- Mehta acknowledged the economic harm to publishers but stated that not all economic harm is the product of an illegal act.
- The judge noted that antitrust laws cannot be applied in place of legislative action for perceived unfairness.
A US federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media against Google, ruling that the tech giant's use of content for its AI search features does not violate antitrust law. The publishers had accused Google of illegally scraping their content to train AI models like Gemini, which they claimed led to a decrease in website traffic.