Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust lawsuits targeting Google AI search
AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Ars Technica, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.
Ryan Whitwam
• October 1, 2026
A US federal judge dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media against Google regarding its AI search features. The companies argued that Google illegally scraped their content to train models like Gemini, causing a decline in traffic for their websites. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google’s actions do not violate antitrust law because there was no formal agreement between the tech giant and the publishers. He noted that while publishers expected free traffic in exchange for hosting content, this expectation does not constitute a legal contract.