TLDR
US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed antitrust suits by Penske Media and Chegg against Google's AI Overviews on 30 September 2026, ruling that crawling a website creates no legal obligation to return traffic. All five claim types failed, though both dismissals are without prejudice and appealable. The ruling shows US antitrust law offers publishers no route to compensation for AI-driven traffic losses, which is why Australian publishers have leaned on bargaining rules rather than the courts.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What the court decided
US District Judge Amit Mehta granted Google's motions to dismiss the antitrust suits brought by Penske Media Corporation and Chegg, Inc. on 30 September 2026, issuing final, appealable orders in both cases.[1] The ruling is an early test of whether Google's AI Overviews feature can be attacked under the Sherman Act, and the answer, at least under US antitrust law as written, is no.
Mehta acknowledged the damage. "Nor is it unsympathetic to the situation publishers now find themselves in, and the knock-on consequences to journalists, educators, and other online creators," he wrote.[1] "The court is bound to apply the law only as it is written, not how the [c]ourt or any party believes it ought to be," Mehta said.[1]
Mehta is the same judge who ruled in August 2024 that Google is an illegal search monopolist in the US government's case. His refusal to extend that logic to publisher claims is a deliberate line, not an oversight.
Five claims, five failures
Penske Media Corporation, whose subsidiary publishers include Rolling Stone, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Deadline, filed its complaint on 12 September 2025.[2] Chegg, the education technology company, had filed its own suit on 24 February 2025.[3] Both complaints alleged that Google's AI Overviews feature systematically scraped their content to generate answers that kept users on Google, gutting referral traffic without compensation.
Mehta dismissed the reciprocal dealing claims, the argument that allowing Google to crawl a site implied a mutual agreement to return traffic, holding that "an expectation is not an agreement."[1] Crawling has never been a contract, and the court found no basis to treat it as one.
The tying claim also failed. Mehta found that Google Search and AI Overviews are a single integrated product, so no per se tying arrangement could exist.[1] The unlawful monopoly maintenance claims in the general search market were dismissed for lack of antitrust standing: the plaintiffs could not show the kind of direct injury the Sherman Act requires.[1]
The attempted monopolisation claims required the plaintiffs to name a second market Google was likely to dominate. The court found neither Penske nor Chegg had defined a plausible second market or alleged a "dangerous probability" of Google monopolising it, and dismissed those counts too.[1] With the federal claims gone, Mehta declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law unjust enrichment claims, dismissing those as well.[1]
Both dismissals are without prejudice, meaning Penske and Chegg can file amended complaints or take the cases to the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
The Australian read
Data from the Digital Content Next (DCN) trial, reported here on 19 September 2026, found that AI Overviews reduce publisher clicks by 39.8 per cent when they appear on a search results page.[4] That is the commercial injury both Penske and Chegg pointed to. Mehta's court acknowledged the harm exists and found that US antitrust law, as written, provides no mechanism to compensate publishers for it.
Australian publishers face the same traffic loss but have a different lever. The News Media Bargaining Code, passed in 2021, lets the government designate a platform and force it into negotiation and, failing that, arbitration; the proposed News Bargaining Incentive adds a charge on large platforms that do not strike deals. Neither requires a publisher to prove an antitrust injury in court.[5] Google's commercial deals with Australian publishers, struck under the shadow of the Code, are the kind of arrangement Penske and Chegg could not compel in a US court.
The 30 September ruling sharpens that contrast. A publisher that believed US courts might eventually force Google to account for AI-driven traffic losses now has a clear answer from Mehta's court, subject to appeal. The structural reasons, the absence of a contractual relationship between crawler and crawled site, the integrated-product finding on tying, the standing barriers, apply equally to any publisher considering a similar suit. The Code's designation and arbitration mechanism, contested as it is, offers what the Sherman Act does not: a trigger that does not require proving an antitrust injury in federal court.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What did Judge Mehta rule on 30 September 2026?
Can Penske Media and Chegg appeal the decision?
Why does this ruling matter for Australian publishers?
What is the News Media Bargaining Code?
Xaviery Malinao writes for Prompt the Market on how brands and agencies are adapting to answer engines, drawing on Bushnote's work with clients across search, AI search and content.
