Education company Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the search engine’s AI summaries have hurt its online traffic.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Google’s AI Overviews creates unfair competition.
Discussing Chegg’s end-of-year financial results, Chegg CEO Nathan Schultz said, “Traffic is being blocked from ever coming to Chegg because of Google’s AIO and their use of Chegg’s content to keep visitors on their own platform.”
The lawsuit argues that Google compels companies like Chegg to supply propriety content in order to be included in the search function. It further alleges that search engine unfairly exercises “monopoly power within search and other anti-competitive conduct to muscle out companies like Chegg,” Schultz said, noting that Google is “reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.”
The AI tool has shifted Google from a “search engine” into an “answer machine,” the CEO explained. “Google’s expansion of AIO forces traffic to remain on Google, eliminating the need to go to third-party content source sites. The impact on Chegg’s business is clear. Our non-subscriber traffic plummeted to negative 49% in January 2025, down significantly from the modest 8% decline we reported in Q2 2024.”
Google spokesperson José Castañeda explained on behalf of the search engine, “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. We will defend against these meritless claims.”
