Edtech company Chegg has sued Google claiming that the tech giant’s AI summaries of search results have hurt Chegg’s traffic and revenue.
In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Chegg accuses Google of unfair competition — specifically reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unjust enrichment. Google, Chegg claims, forces companies to supply their content in order to be included in Google Search, unfairly exercising its monopoly power in search to reap the benefits of third-party IP.
Chegg is seeking compensatory damages and other forms of relief, as well as an injunction on Google’s alleged “unlawful and unfair” conduct.
Chegg is only the latest publisher to take issue with Google’s efforts to inject Google Search with AI. A number of news outlets claim they’ve seen an impact on traffic from Google’s AI summaries in search, which draw from sources around the web to answer Google Search user queries.
We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
