Alphabet’s Google Internet search engine is eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete with their AI-generated overviews, a U.S. education technology company said in a lawsuit filed Monday.
Chegg, an online education company that provides textbook rentals, homework help and tutoring, said in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. that Google is selecting publisher content to allow users to place users on their website, eliminating the financial incentives to be published. .
This will ultimately lead to a “lost information ecosystem with little use and no trustworthiness”, the company said.
The Santa Clara, California-based company said Google’s AI overview has caused a drop in visitors and subscribers. The company’s CEO Nathan Schultz said on Monday that the company is now considering a sales or investment deal.
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the claims were worth it.
“With AI Overview, people find searches more helpful and use more, creating new opportunities for discovering content. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to websites on the site every day, and AI Overview sends traffic to larger The website, a variety of websites, said Castaneda.
Chegg shares closed at $1.57 (about Rs 136) on Monday, down more than 98% from their peak in 2021. The company announced it would reduce its employees by 21% in November.
Schultz said Google profited from the company’s content for free.
“Our lawsuit is not just about Chegg, it’s about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search and the opportunities for students to lose quality, step-by-step learning, while supporting low-quality, unproven AI abstracts,” he said.
Publishers allow Google to crawl to generate search results that monetize ads through ads. In exchange, publishers will receive search traffic from the website when users click on the result, Chegg said.
However, Google has begun forcing publishers to enable IT to use information for AI overviews and other features that lead to reduced website visitors.
Chegg believes that this behavior violates a law and does not have to sell one product on selling a customer or giving another product to a supplier.
The lawsuit is believed to be the first to accuse Google of violating antitrust laws through AI. An Arkansas newspaper made similar claims against Google in a 2023 class action lawsuit representing the press.
The U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta is overseeing the press release case in a case filed by the U.S. Department of Justice ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in online searches.
Google said it would appeal the decision and asked the judge to dismiss the newspaper’s case.
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