State ex rel. Yost v. Google — Ohio Court Rejects Common Carrier Status for Search Engines

Background

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed suit against Google in 2021, arguing that Google’s search engine had become so dominant and central to modern life that it should be regulated as a “common carrier” — a legal status historically applied to railroads, telephone companies, and other businesses obligated to serve all customers without discrimination. If successful, the theory would have required Google to present search results on neutral, non-discriminatory terms, potentially curtailing its ability to prioritize its own products or deprioritize certain content.

The Delaware County Common Pleas Court granted Google’s motion for summary judgment in August 2025, rejecting the Attorney General’s argument. Yost appealed, and the Fifth District Court of Appeals affirmed.

The Court’s Holding

The appellate court upheld the trial court’s ruling that Google Search is not a common carrier under Ohio common law, applying the state’s two-prong test for common carrier status.

On the first prong — the “carrier” element — the court held that Google does not transport the property of others. A traditional common carrier receives property, carries it, and returns it unaltered (think of a shipping company delivering a package). Google does the opposite: it receives a user’s query, applies proprietary algorithms, exercises editorial judgment, and creates a brand-new Search Results Page that “did not previously exist in that form.” That output is Google’s own expressive product, not someone else’s information transmitted unchanged. The State’s analogy to telephone service failed because telephone networks carry the caller’s words intact; Google’s search engine creates something new.

On the second prong — the “common” element (holding oneself out to serve the public indifferently) — the court found another fundamental mismatch. Classic common carrier regulation is built around rates: courts ensure prices are just and non-discriminatory. Google charges users nothing for search. Its revenue comes from advertising. There is no “rate” for a court to regulate. Imposing nondiscrimination requirements on search outputs would target the content and ordering of results — Google’s editorial choices — raising First Amendment concerns far beyond the traditional scope of common carrier law.

The court also noted two additional reasons to decline intervention: (1) federal communications law classifies search engines as “information services” rather than telecommunications carriers subject to common carrier regulation, creating potential preemption of state-law obligations; and (2) forcing Google to carry, rank, or display speech it would otherwise de-emphasize implicates the First Amendment’s protection of editorial discretion, as reaffirmed in Moody v. NetChoice, LLC (2024).

Key Takeaways

• Search engines are editorial curators, not neutral conduits: The court’s core holding is that Google Search creates a new expressive product rather than passively transporting others’ content — a distinction that defeats both prongs of the common carrier test.
• Common carrier doctrine cannot fill the legislative gap: The Ohio General Assembly has not extended common carrier obligations to search engines, and the court refused to do so by judicial fiat. Platform regulation, if it comes, must come from legislators, not courts applying centuries-old transportation law.
• Zero-price markets complicate traditional rate regulation: Because Google charges users nothing, the cornerstone of common carrier oversight — rate review — has nothing to bite on. The court flagged the poor fit between common carrier economics and two-sided, zero-price digital markets.
• First Amendment acts as a backstop: Even under the broad “affected with a public interest” standard from Munn v. Illinois (1876), compelling Google to alter the ordering and content of search results would trigger, not avoid, constitutional scrutiny.

Why It Matters

State attorneys general across the country have experimented with various legal theories to regulate dominant technology platforms — common carrier status, antitrust, and consumer protection statutes. This decision is a setback for the common carrier approach, at least under state common law. It joins a growing body of authority — including the Ninth Circuit’s earlier skepticism about applying common carrier status to Google Gmail (Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Google, 2026) — holding that editorial curation is fundamentally different from neutral transmission.

The ruling does not foreclose all platform regulation. The court explicitly acknowledged Congress could legislate. But it underscores that when states reach for common law tools designed for nineteenth-century railroads and ferry operators, those tools break down against twenty-first-century platforms whose core product is curated information rather than transported goods.