Google beat the Chegg/Penske AI Overviews lawsuits — is there any opt-out left for publishers?
Judge Amit Mehta in D.C. just dismissed the antitrust suits from Chegg and Penske Media over AI Overviews, ruling publishers have only an 'expectation' of search traffic, not an agreement with Google. He said antitrust law is not a substitute for legislators. I run a small docs site and keep my crawler open purely for search traffic — if I block Googlebot to dodge AI Overviews, I vanish from search entirely. Is there any real technical option left, or is the tradeoff now simply feed the summaries or be invisible?
1 answer
- The 41-page opinion, in one number
Mehta ruled in a 41-page opinion that publishers let Google crawl because it serves their own interest in traffic — not because they struck a bargain. That kills the tying claim because users want answers, whether link or summary. Practically: the ruling says this is Congress's problem, not the courts'. Watch for a legislative push; a technical opt-out that keeps full search ranking does not currently exist.