Judge Mehta Calls Google's AI Overviews Stance "Really Unfair"

A federal judge who already ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in search pushed back hard on the company’s defense of AI Overviews during a Tuesday hearing. Judge Amit Mehta told Google’s attorneys the arrangement “all seems really unfair,” according to Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, who attended the hearing and posted a detailed account on X.

The hearing addressed Google’s motion to dismiss Penske Media’s antitrust lawsuit, which argues Google is using its dominant Search position to compel publishers into supplying content for AI answers. Mehta has not ruled on the motion. His comments came in the course of questioning, not in a written opinion, and Google’s dismissal bid remains pending.

Google’s attorneys described AI Overviews as a “product improvement” and characterized the traditional publisher arrangement, crawling content in exchange for referral traffic, as a “vague historical course of dealing,” per Kint’s account. Mehta was reportedly unconvinced. He noted that publishers lack control over how their material is reused and said the feature was built “on the backs of the publishers.” He also stated that product improvements “are not immune from antitrust scrutiny,” a distinction that matters because Google’s core defense rests on treating AI Overviews as an ordinary extension of search rather than a separate product subject to closer review.

Judge Mehta also drew a market comparison that Penske’s side leaned on. According to Kint, the judge observed that a paid market for generative AI training inputs is now forming, with Penske pointing to OpenAI and Perplexity as competitors that pay publishers for content. Penske’s argument is that Google instead uses its search monopoly to obtain the same material at no cost, which raises costs and barriers for rivals trying to license content on fair terms.

Google’s public position is that publishers retain the ability to opt out of indexing entirely, and separately out of AI Mode and AI Overviews specifically. That opt-out is real, but it is not symmetrical. A publisher that blocks AI Overviews risks losing the reduced traffic that feature still sends, while a publisher that blocks indexing altogether forfeits the ten blue links that remain the larger traffic source for most sites. Neither choice preserves the pre-AI-Overviews status quo.

This is a hearing on a motion to dismiss, not a verdict, and Mehta’s remarks are not a ruling on the merits. But they signal that the judge is weighing whether the monopoly finding in the 2024 United States v. Google case extends to how Google sets terms with publishers over AI training and answer generation. The case has been active since September 2025, and a decision on dismissal would determine whether Penske’s claims proceed to discovery.

Search Engine Journal reported on the hearing and Kint’s account of Mehta’s comments.

For publishers weighing whether to block AI Overviews crawling, the near-term signal is not the outcome of this case but the judge’s framing: courts may now treat AI feature design as a distinct antitrust question rather than folding it into ordinary product evolution. Search teams tracking this suit should watch for the dismissal ruling as the marker of whether Google’s “opt out or lose everything” framing survives judicial scrutiny.

Search Engine Journal (Roger Montti) reported on the August 25, 2026 hearing, citing Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint’s account of Judge Amit Mehta’s remarks.