Alphabet’s Google web search engine is eroding demand for unique content material and undermining publishers’ skill to compete with its synthetic intelligence-generated overviews, a US instructional expertise firm stated in a lawsuit filed on Monday.
Chegg, a web-based training firm that provides textbook leases, homework assist, and tutoring, stated 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.
It will ultimately result in a “hollowed-out data ecosystem of little use and unworthy of belief,” the corporate stated.
The Santa Clara, California-based firm has stated Google’s AI overviews have prompted a drop in guests and subscribers. The corporate is now contemplating a sale or take-private transaction because of this, the corporate’s CEO Nathan Schultz stated on Monday.
Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda known 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. Each day, Google sends billions of clicks to websites throughout the online, and AI Overviews ship visitors to a higher variety of websites,” Castaneda stated.
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 employees in November.
Schultz stated Google is profiting off the corporate’s content material at no cost.
“Our lawsuit is about greater than Chegg – it is in regards to 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 stated.
Publishers permit Google to crawl their web sites to generate search outcomes, which Google monetizes by way of promoting. In trade, the publishers obtain search visitors to their websites when customers click on on the outcomes, Chegg stated.
However Google has began coercing publishers to let it use the knowledge for AI overviews and different options that lead to fewer website guests, the corporate stated.
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 way of AI overviews. An Arkansas newspaper made comparable 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 stated it can enchantment that call, and has requested the decide to dismiss the newspaper’s case.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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