( September 30, 2026, 22:05 GMT | Official Statement) -- MLex Summary: US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed Chegg and Penske Media Corp.'s lawsuits alleging that Google leveraged monopoly power in the general search services market to coerce them and other online publishers to supply cost-free content to Google. He found that their antitrust claims failed for several reasons, including that the plaintiffs failed to allege plausible claims of reciprocal dealing and insufficient antitrust standing in the general search services market. "The court does not treat Plaintiffs’ alleged harms lightly. Nor is it 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," the judge wrote. "But the 'antitrust statutes' are not 'in any sense a substitute for [a] legislative body addressing questions of . . . economic dislocation caused by new innovation'," he added. See court document. ...
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