Judge Tosses Antitrust Lawsuits Against Google Over AI Summaries
A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by education technology platform Chegg and entertainment publisher Penske Media Corp against Alphabet, parent company of Google. The plaintiffs claimed that Google engaged in anticompetitive conduct by tying search visibility to AI summaries.
Chegg and Penske alleged that Google repurposed their copyrighted content into AI-generated search summaries that diverted readers away from their websites. They argued that this forced publishers to permit their digital content to be summarised by AI Overviews if they wished to stay indexed in Google Search.
The judge rejected the claims, stating that an expectation of web traffic is not an agreement. He noted that antitrust statutes cannot serve as a stand-in for congressional action to remedy the economic fallout of technological innovation.