The ongoing battle between digital media and big tech over website traffic just hit a dramatic legal turning point. Online publishers hoping to use antitrust laws to stop Google’s AI Overviews from eating their traffic just suffered a major setback in court.
US District Judge Amit Mehta officially dismissed separate antitrust lawsuits brought by education platform Chegg and Penske Media Corporation—the publisher behind Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Variety. Both companies accused Google of leveraging its dominance to siphon away readers and ad revenue. They argued that Google leaves creators with a forced choice: let AI scrape their content for free summaries, or opt out and watch their search visibility vanish.
Why antitrust law failed to protect publisher traffic
Despite ruling in 2024 that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in general search, Judge Mehta decided that the publishers’ claims failed under current antitrust law.
The judge explained that receiving search traffic is not a legally binding contract between Google and websites. “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 wrote. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works” (via Reuters).
Mehta still expressed sympathy for digital publishers facing severe traffic drops. However, he has emphasized that antitrust courts lack the power to fix the economic disruption caused by rapid tech innovations. That task falls to Congress instead.
The shift toward commercial licensing deals
This decision marks the second major defeat for publishers this year, following similar dismissals involving local outlets like Helena World Chronicle and Emmerich Newspapers in March.
With court challenges hitting a wall, the industry is pivoting toward direct financial negotiations. Google is currently running a pilot program paying around 100 publishers to use their content across AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, signaling that commercial licensing deals may be the only practical way for media outlets to get paid.
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