Recently, online education company Chegg filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, accusing tech giant Google of using the AI summary function of its search results to damage Chegg's traffic and revenue. Chegg said in the complaint that Google's actions constituted unfair competition, including reciprocity transactions, monopoly maintenance and unjust enrichment.
Chegg claims Google forced the company to provide content in order to get a display opportunity in Google searches. This practice is believed to be abusing Google's monopoly position in the search field to gain benefits from third-party intellectual property rights. Chegg demands compensation for compensation and other remedies in the lawsuit and seeks an injunction against Google's so-called "illegal and unfair" behavior.
Chegg isn't the first publisher to express dissatisfaction with Google's AI search capabilities. More and more news organizations say that Google's use of AI digests in search results has affected its website traffic. These summary answers Google search users' queries by extracting information from all over the network, which also bothers many companies that rely on search engine traffic.
Currently, Chegg's lawsuit has attracted widespread public attention, showing that in the digital economy, the contradiction between the platform and the content provider still exists. Google has not responded to this yet, and the media is waiting for further comments.
Key points:
Chegg sued Google for alleging that its AI search summary hurts traffic and revenue.
Chegg accused Google of unfair competition, demanding compensation and injunctions.
Several news organizations also expressed dissatisfaction with Google's AI summary, saying it affected website traffic.