Online education company Chegg is suing Alphabet in a first-of-its-kind antitrust lawsuit, claiming Google’s AI search result summaries have reduced its traffic and revenue by eroding demand for original content.
Chegg files first-of-a-kind lawsuit
Online education company Chegg has filed an antitrust lawsuit in a federal district court, accusing Google’s AI summaries of killing its business. The company claims that Google is erasing any financial incentive to publish by co-opting original content and using it for AI Overviews.
Chegg said in its filing:
- “Alphabet’s Google internet search engine is eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete with its artificial intelligence-generated overviews.”
In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Google, Chegg claims that the company is undermining publishers and denying students access to quality learning.
Chegg CEO and president Nathan Schultz reportedly said:
- “Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg – it’s about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries.”
Google accused of coercing publishers
Chegg made several accusations against Google, including that it was coercing publishers by using their content for AI overviews and profiting from advertisements whilst not promoting their websites.
A Chegg spokesperson explained how it works:
- “Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results.”
The online education company said it creates content specifically for Google’s search engine and depends on its referrals, which it is no longer getting:
- “Chegg depends on referrals from Google’s monopoly search engine for a large portion of the revenue that it devotes to producing original online content.”
Chegg says that by using publishers’ content for AI Overviews, Google is reducing the original author’s traffic and revenue:
- “Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors.”
Adding that because of AI Overviews, Google Search will become a hollowed-out information ecosystem:
- “This will eventually lead to hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust.”
Google profiting from publishers’ content
Chegg CEO Schultz said Google is profiting from their content for free by using educational information from its website for its AI Overviews.
Chegg further claims that Google used its library of 135 million questions and answers on various educational subjects for its AI Overviews training data sets, which it then uses for AI summaries that compete directly with the original authors.
Schultz added Google is using its power to create a monopoly whilst reaping the rewards:
- Google is reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.”
To prove its claim, Chegg provided a screenshot of a Google AI Overview search result that uses content from its website without attributing the information to the company.
Google says claims are meritless
Jose Castaneda of Google called Chegg’s claims meritless, saying AI overviews create new content discovery opportunities that people find helpful.
Google’s official response to the lawsuit:
- “With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites.”
Looking forward
While Google faces more severe antitrust/monopoly cases in the US and abroad, Chegg`s lawsuit could worry the tech giant.
If the federal court favors the edtech company and finds Google guilty of reducing its traffic and revenue by using its content on AI Overviews, other publishers will surely follow.
