Judge Dismisses Google AI Overviews Publisher Lawsuits

Free Instant SEO Audit

By NewSunSEO October 12, 2026

A federal judge dismissed two lawsuits that accused Google of using its search dominance to pull readers away from publisher websites, Reuters reports. US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the cases brought by Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and the education technology company Chegg in a ruling on Wednesday, reported by Reuters on October 1, 2026.

What happened

Judge Mehta is the same judge who ruled in 2024 that Google maintained a monopoly in online search services, as The Verge noted in its coverage of the dismissal. In lawsuits filed last year, Chegg and PMC accused Google of coercing publishers into supplying content for AI Overviews for free, or risk disappearing from search results, and said that practice cut their traffic and advertising revenue. Chegg’s suit claimed Google illegally scraped its educational content so that Gemini models could recreate it, according to Ars Technica. PMC, which owns Rolling Stone and Variety, alleged lost traffic from the same features.

Chegg filed its case on February 24, 2025, which Reuters described as believed to be the first antitrust lawsuit filed by a single company over the AI Overviews feature, as The Verge reported at the time. Chegg’s chief executive, Nathan Schultz, said in prepared remarks for investors that the suit was about "the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search". A Google spokesperson, Jose Castaneda, said in a statement to Reuters that "Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites."

Google has denied wrongdoing and argued it has no obligation to index publishers’ content on their preferred terms, as reported through Press Gazette and Reuters. On the fresh dismissals, Chegg, PMC and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Reuters said. The cases are Chegg Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 25-cv-543, and Penske Media Corp. v. Google, No. 25-cv-3192. Judge Mehta rejected similar publisher claims in March, making this the second such case he has turned down this year.

Why the lawsuits failed

The ruling turns on the difference between an expectation and an agreement. "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." Because Google never had a formal arrangement with Chegg or PMC, the court found antitrust law did not apply.

Search Engine Journal reported that the judge rejected five categories of claims: reciprocal dealing, tying, unlawful monopoly maintenance, attempted monopolization and monopoly leveraging, and unjust enrichment. On tying, the court found PMC had not plausibly established that Google Search and AI Overviews are separate products with separate consumer demand, according to Search Engine Journal. The order in the PMC case was granted without prejudice and is final and appealable.

The judge did not find that publishers suffered no harm. The court does not treat Plaintiffs’ alleged harms lightly. 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, he wrote, per Ars Technica. He added that antitrust law cannot stand in for legislation: "The court is bound to apply the law only as it is written, not how the court or any party believes it ought to be."

What the ruling leaves unresolved for publishers

Publishers can exclude webpages from being used for AI Overviews, but those pages still appear in traditional search results, Engadget notes. The ruling does not resolve broader questions for publishers. It also leaves open the questions of copyright, licensing and whether publishers should be paid when their work feeds an answer.

The publisher said its organic affiliate revenue fell by more than a third from its peak to the end of 2024, and that search impressions and referrals to its content dropped after AI Overviews rolled out, as Press Gazette reported. Separately, The Information reported that Google is paying around 100 publishers for their contributions to AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini as part of a pilot program, according to The Verge.

Publishers may have more room overseas. The UK has ordered Google to provide an AI opt-out for sites that want to remain in organic search results, and the European Commission is weighing the same questions, Ars Technica reported.

What to do now

Here is the rewritten sentence:

The steps below explain how an agency measures client websites.

Compare organic referral trends in analytics and Google Search Console before and after AI Overviews expanded. A Search Console impressions logging error ran from May 13, 2025 to April 27, 2026, according to Search Engine Journal, so a before-and-after comparison that crosses that window can show a measurement break rather than a real drop.
Confirm whether the client’s pages are opted out of being used for AI Overviews, and be clear with the client that opting out does not remove those pages from traditional search results.
Check how the client’s brand appears inside AI search, not only where it ranks in organic results. BizScoreAI scores how visible a business is to AI search and shows what its listing looks like to the engines people ask. Our write-up on whether brands that rank on Google also show up in ChatGPT covers what a study found on that overlap.
Watch for referral traffic from Gemini. A Reddit user found UTM parameters on links from Gemini, and Google’s John Mueller confirmed he sees them too, though Google has not documented when it adds them, per Search Engine Journal. Tagged links give analytics a way to identify those visits without relying on the referrer.
Track policy movement abroad and Google’s publisher-payment pilot, since the US dismissal does not bind regulators in the UK or the EU and does not resolve compensation.

FAQ

Who sued Google over AI Overviews?

Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and the education technology company Chegg filed lawsuits alleging that Google’s AI Overviews diverted readers and harmed their online advertising businesses.

Why did the judge dismiss the AI Overviews lawsuits?

Judge Amit Mehta found that the publishers showed only an expectation of receiving traffic in exchange for freely available content, not an agreement or coercive tie that would support an antitrust claim that Google used a search monopoly.

Can publishers block their content from AI Overviews?

Publishers can opt webpages out of being used for AI Overviews, though those pages can still appear in traditional Google search results, which now share the results page with AI-generated summaries.

Related coverage

SEOScanPro

SEOScanPro runs a full technical audit of a site and shows the measured result behind every check. Open the AI visibility report.

This article reports on publicly available information from the sources listed below. We have no reason to believe it is inaccurate, but we have not independently verified every claim, and details may change as the story develops. This is not financial, legal or investment advice.