Alphabet’s Google web search engine is eroding demand for authentic content material and undermining publishers’ capacity to compete with its synthetic intelligence-generated overviews, a US instructional know-how firm mentioned in a lawsuit filed on Monday.
Chegg, a web based training firm that provides textbook leases, homework assist, and tutoring, mentioned within the lawsuit filed in Washington, DC, that Google is co-opting publishers’ content material to maintain customers by itself website, erasing monetary incentives to publish.
This can ultimately result in a “hollowed-out info ecosystem of little use and unworthy of belief,” the corporate mentioned.
The Santa Clara, California-based firm has mentioned Google’s AI overviews have brought on a drop in guests and subscribers. The corporate is now contemplating a sale or take-private transaction in consequence, the corporate’s CEO Nathan Schultz mentioned on Monday.
Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda referred to as the claims meritless.
“With AI Overviews, individuals discover Search extra useful and use it extra, creating new alternatives for content material to be found. Day-after-day, Google sends billions of clicks to websites throughout the net, and AI Overviews ship visitors to a higher range of websites,” Castaneda mentioned.
Chegg shares closed at $1.57 (roughly Rs. 136) on Monday, down greater than 98 % from its peak value in 2021. The corporate introduced it could lay off 21 % of its workers in November.
Schultz mentioned Google is profiting off the corporate’s content material without cost.
“Our lawsuit is about greater than Chegg – it is concerning the digital publishing trade, the way forward for web search, and about college students dropping entry to high quality, step-by-step studying in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries,” he mentioned.
Publishers permit Google to crawl their web sites to generate search outcomes, which Google monetizes by means of promoting. In trade, the publishers obtain search visitors to their websites when customers click on on the outcomes, Chegg mentioned.
However Google has began coercing publishers to let it use the data for AI overviews and different options that lead to fewer website guests, the corporate mentioned.
Chegg argued the conduct violates a regulation towards conditioning the sale of 1 product on the client promoting or giving its provider one other product.
The lawsuit is believed to be the primary the place a single firm accuses Google of violating antitrust regulation by means of AI overviews. An Arkansas newspaper made related claims towards Google in a category motion on behalf of the information trade in 2023.
US District Choose Amit Mehta, who dominated in a case introduced by the US Division of Justice that Google holds an unlawful monopoly in on-line search, is overseeing the information writer case.
Google has mentioned it should attraction that call, and has requested the choose to dismiss the newspaper’s case.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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