Google Wins Antitrust Lawsuits Over AI-Generated Search Results
A US federal judge has dismissed lawsuits against Google accusing it of draining websites' traffic with its AI overviews. Chegg, an online tutoring platform, and Penske Media, parent company of Rolling Stone, Variety, and Billboard, had accused the search engine of scraping their content for free to feed its answers.
The judge ruled that none of this falls under antitrust law, stating that plaintiffs only had an 'expectation' of traffic in exchange for the content they made available for free. He acknowledged the damage but said the court applies the law as it is written, not as everyone would like it to be.
The US Congress may pass legislation on the subject, giving publishers a chance in court. However, until then, publishers have virtually no chance of winning their cases. The European Commission and the UK have taken notice of these issues, with the UK already ordering Google to let sites opt out of AI without being kicked out of regular results.
Google is testing a program that pays around 100 publishers to feed its AI answers, but the talks are going badly according to American press. The ruling adds to growing concerns for those who rely on article revenue.