A Judge Ruled Google Owes Publishers Nothing for AI Overviews. The Traffic Numbers Say Otherwise

Penske's theory was straightforward. Publishers make their journalism freely crawlable, Google ranks and indexes it, and in return Google sends readers back to the publisher's own site and ads. AI Overviews break that exchange by answering the question directly, inside Google, with no click required.

Judge Mehta didn't dispute that this is what's happening. He ruled that it isn't illegal, because no contract or formal commitment ever existed, just a decades-long industry habit that both sides understood differently once the incentives changed.

What the ruling actually says

In a 41-page opinion, Mehta granted Google's motion to dismiss both the Penske and Chegg antitrust claims, writing that the publishers "pleaded only an expectation that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free," and that "an expectation is not an agreement," per The Hollywood Reporter's coverage. Without a concrete bargain to point to, the Sherman Act claim had nothing to attach to.

Mehta added that he was not "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," per Press Gazette. That line matters: a judge can find real harm and still have no legal hook to act on it. Copyright and licensing claims over the same conduct weren't decided here at all.

The data the lawsuit was built on

None of the numbers below come from the lawsuit itself. They're independent measurements of what AI Overviews actually do to a click, gathered before and after this case was filed.

Why Penske and Chegg specifically

Penske filed first, in September 2025, joined by fourteen of its own publications, Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline among them. Chegg, the online homework-help company, filed a separate but related suit arguing AI Overviews were answering student questions directly and gutting its subscription business. Both were consolidated in front of the same judge and dismissed in the same opinion, per Forbes' coverage of the dismissal.

Both companies picked antitrust as their legal theory because it was the strongest claim available to them. Copyright law is murkier here: Google's own search crawling and snippet display have survived fair-use challenges for two decades. An antitrust claim didn't need to prove copying was unlawful, only that an established economic bargain had been broken. Mehta's ruling is specifically that no such bargain, provable in court, ever existed.

What happens next

1. 1An appeal is still possible. A motion-to-dismiss loss ends the case at this stage but isn't necessarily the final word; Penske and Chegg can seek review at the D.C. Circuit.
2. 2Copyright and licensing fights continue separately. This ruling doesn't touch those theories, and several publishers have pursued direct licensing deals with AI companies rather than litigation.
3. 3The traffic decline keeps compounding regardless of the verdict. The Pew and Ahrefs numbers above describe behavior that doesn't change because a court found no contract to enforce.
4. 4Watch what Google does with attribution, not just what courts rule. Google has been testing more prominent source links inside AI Overviews; whether that meaningfully restores clicks is a separate, measurable question from this case.