Google has won a dismissal of two lawsuits alleging that the company’s AI Overviews in Search negatively impact internet traffic.
Last year, news publisher Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and ed tech company Chegg filed antitrust lawsuits against Google, arguing that the search giant’s AI Overviews were drawing people away from their sites. Google naturally filed to dismiss the suits, and on Oct. 1, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ultimately ruled in favour of Google.
In court, Mehta said AI Overviews don’t violate antitrust law as neither Penske nor Chegg had formal agreements with Google.
“Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free,” wrote Mehta. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.”
That said, Mehta, who was the same judge who ruled in 2024 that Google operates a search monopoly, did acknowledge that Google’s AI search features is harming publishers.
“The court does not treat Plaintiffs’ alleged harms lightly,” he wrote. “Nor is it unsympathetic to the situation publishers now find themselves in, and the knock-on consequences to journalists, educators, and other online creators whose content Google takes and repurposes without compensation.”
Indeed, there has been a lot of research from groups like the Pew Research Institute that demonstrates that AI Overviews can siphon as much as 50 per cent — if not more — of traffic from websites. That’s to say nothing of the misinformation that AI Overviews continues to spread. But of course, Mehta’s job was simply to determine whether Google’s harmful AI tools actually broke any laws, and ultimately, he concluded that wasn’t the case.
Image credit: Google
Source: United States District Court Via: Engadget
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