A federal judge just handed Google a clean win in two lawsuits over AI Overviews.
US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed antitrust claims brought separately by Chegg and Penske Media Corporation, the publisher behind Rolling Stone. Both companies sued last year, arguing Google forced publishers to feed content into AI Overviews or else vanish from search results entirely. That setup, they said, let Google keep users on its own pages instead of sending clicks to the sites that made the content. Mehta ruled Wednesday that the claims do not hold up under antitrust law.
The decision matters beyond these two companies. Publishers have spent two years warning that AI-generated summaries are quietly strangling the traffic model search engines built. A court saying that complaint is not an antitrust violation does not make the traffic problem go away - it just closes off one legal route for fixing it.
Chegg in particular has been candid about AI search eating into its business, and this ruling removes a legal avenue it was counting on. Don't expect this to be the last word: publishers unhappy with AI Overviews are more likely to pursue copyright claims or wait on regulators than try the same antitrust argument twice.