US judge dismisses Chegg and Penske Media antitrust suits over Google AI Overviews' use of publisher content

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the District of Columbia dismissed antitrust lawsuits brought by education company Chegg and Penske Media Corp (publisher of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety) over Google's AI Overviews. The publishers alleged Google unlawfully used their content in AI-generated summaries that draw readers away from their sites, conditioning search indexing on consent to AI Overviews.

Mehta dismissed the federal antitrust claims at the pleading stage, writing that plaintiffs pleaded only an "expectation" that Google would send search traffic in exchange for free content, and that "an expectation is not an agreement" - no agreed reciprocal terms on price or quantity were established. Dismissed claim types included reciprocal dealing, tying, monopoly maintenance, attempted monopolization, leveraging, and unjust enrichment. The judge noted he is "not unsympathetic" to publishers whose content Google takes and repurposes without compensation, but said antitrust law does not substitute for legislators addressing innovation-driven economic harm.

The ruling is an outcome event in the publisher-versus-AI content-use fight: it does not determine that AI Overviews cause no commercial harm, and leaves copyright, licensing and compensation questions unresolved. The Penske order is appealable; no appeal was confirmed in the sources reviewed.