State ex rel. Yost v. Google, L.L.C.

Issue: State ex rel. Yost v. Google* asks whether Google's internet search engine qualifies as a common carrier under Ohio common law — a status that would impose non-discrimination and equal-access obligations on the company. The question is non-obvious because Google processes billions of queries, exercises substantial influence over what information reaches the public, and some courts and scholars have argued that dominant information intermediaries should bear the same obligations as railroads or telegraph lines. Ohio's two-prong common carrier test requires both that the entity transport others' property without material alteration and that it hold itself out to serve the public indifferently, and it was disputed whether Google's algorithmic curation and zero-fee model satisfy either requirement.

The State of Ohio filed suit in June 2021 seeking to classify Google Search as a common carrier; after a public utility claim was dismissed on a motion to dismiss in 2022, both parties moved for summary judgment on the remaining common carrier question. On August 15, 2025, the Delaware County Common Pleas Court granted Google's motion and denied the State's, and the State timely appealed to the Ohio Fifth Appellate District. This document is a published, precedential appellate opinion dated June 8, 2026, affirming the trial court. The Fifth District held that Google fails both prongs of Ohio's common carrier test: its search engine creates an entirely new expressive product rather than transmitting third-party content unaltered, defeating the carrier prong, and its individualized algorithmic curation combined with a zero-fee model eliminates the indiscriminate service and rate-review mechanisms that define the common prong. The court further declined to revive the broader *Munn* "affected with a public interest" standard as an independent basis for judicial regulation, citing First Amendment concerns under *Moody v. NetChoice* and the federal classification of search engines as "information services" under 47 U.S.C. § 153(24).

This is the first Ohio appellate opinion to apply the state's common law common carrier framework directly to an internet search engine, and it forecloses both the narrow common carrier theory and its broader quasi-public-utility variant at the Ohio appellate level. The court's explicit referral of any further regulation to the General Assembly functions as a roadmap for legislative action — such as a statutory must-carry or non-discrimination regime — while leaving unresolved whether federal preemption under the Communications Act would bar such a law. The opinion's favorable citation of *Moody v. NetChoice* and the Ninth Circuit's emerging skepticism in *Republican National Committee v. Google* suggests a developing cross-jurisdictional consensus that judicial extension of common carrier doctrine to search engines raises serious constitutional obstacles, making this decision a significant data point for any state-level regulatory effort targeting search and algorithmic curation.