Chegg is type of on its final dying breath at this level, however it’ll exit combating. The on-line schooling firm, which began out renting textbooks and later expanded into on-line homework assist, sued Google on Monday for anticompetitive practices, saying it’s unfairly scraping materials from Chegg for its AI-powered search outcomes.
The lawsuit isn’t something groundbreaking or novel—Google has been attacked through the years by the likes of Yelp over claims it makes use of its search dominance to repeat its merchandise and maintain customers by itself web site. Chegg argues that by scraping web sites and surfacing snippets immediately within the search outcomes web page, Google is killing demand for unique content material and eroding the monetary incentives for firms like Chegg to really spend money on producing the fabric that powers AI packages.
While huge tech firms have lined up in help of President Trump, a few of the new administration stays skeptical of the business, so it’s not a assure that Google will be capable of dodge the case. Though, it’s notable that Chegg’s inventory is down 30% the day after the lawsuit was filed.
Google and others in tech have argued their use of others’ materials in chatbots is honest use as a result of they’re reworking the content material considerably. And they are saying new instruments like AI-powered summaries don’t cut back site visitors to third-party websites as a result of they might help customers discover the data they need quicker; folks will at all times wish to dive in deeper once they discover one thing of curiosity. But with an internet site like Chegg that may present easy solutions to math issues to lazy college students, it appears customers might merely copy-paste the response from Google and transfer on.
Chegg has had a rollercoaster of a experience since 2020. Besides textbook leases, the corporate provides the flexibility to hunt homework assist from a gaggle of on-line consultants, and demand for its providers instantly skyrocketed on the onslaught of the pandemic. The return to classroom instruction and the launch of ChatGPT reversed all these positive factors, nonetheless. Chegg’s inventory is buying and selling at simply $1 per share as we speak, down from a peak of $113 in 2021 after shedding lots of of hundreds of subscribers in 2024.
The firm, by suing Google for scraping web sites to make use of in chatbots, does have some extent that the tech large is supporting the lifeless web concept, the concept that the web is being overrun by bot exercise and routinely generated content material (see: Facebook, YouTube AI slop). Chegg itself has rushed to compete with its personal AI-assisted solutions, and customers on boards like Reddit have alleged the offered options are frequently not right. In a way, firms like Google are in charge for that. Chegg needed to do one thing to try to sustain, however its solutions are onerous to belief at this level (apart from the vetted textbook options).
Other web sites like StackOverflow, a Q&A web site for programmers, have equally been hollowed out by the appearance of chatbots. Something that’s missed about utilizing a web site like StackOverflow is that struggling by way of issues helps one achieve foundational information greater than getting a solution returned instantly with no reasoning. StackOverflow requires one to learn a number of professional discussions to get the total image. It is slower, however one comes out higher understanding not simply the answer to an issue however why it labored. Chegg has stated it needs to focus on “curious learners” with extra complete and vetted solutions, assisted in fact, by AI.
Chegg won’t be probably the most sympathetic character, however there’s actual concern about what instruments like Google’s AI summaries are doing to the web if web sites like theirs and StackOverflow can not survive and produce the detailed, step-by-step information that helps AI fashions within the first place. Unfortunately, it looks as if many customers don’t care, nonetheless, and can settle for Google’s AI solutions out of sheer laziness even when they’re conscious it’s susceptible to creating errors.
