Publishers Lose the Antitrust Route Against AI Overviews, For Now

Publishers suing Google over AI Overviews lost a round in federal court because their antitrust theories failed on the pleadings, not because the judge doubted they were hurt. Search Engine Journal (Roger Montti) reported on October 1 that Judge Amit P. Mehta dismissed the amended complaints from Penske Media and Chegg. The sources reviewed do not state the date of the ruling itself.

SEJ says the Penske order dismisses on Google’s motion, without prejudice, and describes the order as final and appealable. In plain terms, the dismissal is not a verdict that Google did nothing wrong. It is a finding that these complaints, as written, did not meet the bar for these claims.

The judge was direct about the harm. He wrote: “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.”

The central failure was contract-shaped. Publishers argued that letting Google crawl their pages in exchange for referral traffic amounted to a deal. Mehta wrote: “Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an “expectation” that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free. But an expectation is not an agreement.” Press Gazette, which also covered the ruling, reports that he rejected an implied-agreement theory because it supplied no essential terms such as price or quantity. It adds that he said publishers keep content open to crawling “because doing so serves their own independent interest in search traffic, not because they struck any bargain with Google.”

Three other claim types fell for separate reasons. On tying, SEJ reports that Penske failed to plausibly show the two features answer distinct consumer needs. On monopoly maintenance, the judge found the plaintiffs lacked antitrust standing as participants in that search market. On attempted monopolization, he wrote that the PMC plaintiffs “do not even attempt to quantify Google’s market share in online publishing.”

The California unjust enrichment claims were handled differently. After dismissing every federal claim, the judge declined to hear the state claims in federal court, per SEJ. That is a jurisdictional choice, not a ruling on whether Google was unjustly enriched.

Penske’s numbers deserve careful labeling. Press Gazette reports that Penske, whose titles include Variety and Rolling Stone, alleged that organic affiliate income dropped by over one third between its high point and late 2024, and said losing search visibility would be “devastating” in revenue terms. Those are allegations in a complaint. The court did not adopt them as findings.

The ruling also fits a pattern. Press Gazette notes that a similar case from local publishers Helena World Chronicle and Emmerich Newspapers was dismissed earlier this year, with Mehta again finding no evidence of an agreement to supply content for search traffic. Two dismissals on the same logic suggest that the Sherman Act theory, as framed so far, is narrow.

Other routes remain open. Press Gazette reports that Google is rolling out a Search Console feature that lets publishers withhold content from AI Overviews and related AI products, following an instruction from the UK’s competition regulator. It also reports that Google is reportedly trialling payments to publishers whose content makes a “significant” contribution to its AI features. Neither is a court outcome, and neither has been independently measured in the sources.

Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, argued that the problem now needs a different decision-maker: “At some point, someone with authority has to address what is happening in the real world.”

What the ruling leaves undecided matters most. It does not say AI Overviews are lawful, does not resolve the state claims, and, because the Penske dismissal is without prejudice per SEJ, does not necessarily end that case. The sources do not say whether Penske or Chegg will amend or appeal.

Publishers weighing action should treat licensing talks and regulator-driven controls as the practical levers, and should test what an AI Overviews opt-out costs in visibility before using it.

Based on reporting by Search Engine Journal (Roger Montti) published October 1, 2026, with additional facts from Press Gazette (Charlotte Tobitt) published October 1, 2026.