Trust & Antitrust in the Age of AI

A FEW DAYS ago, California-based online education company Chegg filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that the 'overviews', which the American multinational tech company's generative AI tools curate upon every search, are leading to a significant decrease in traffic on their website.

- GARIMA SADHWANI

Chegg's lawsuit, filed in Washington DC, said not only is Google violating its antitrust laws, but is also creating a "hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust".

Isha Suri, research lead at the Centre for Internet and Society (who has worked in areas including competition law, internet governance, intellectual property rights, and privacy and data protection), explains to FE, "When it comes to antitrust, the issue at hand is that Google is allegedly abusing its position as a dominant player which has come to be essential infrastructure in the online advertising market, where it plays a dual role as that of an intermediary, and also a market participant." This, then means that people who are advertising through Google are also competing with the tech giant.

While the lawsuit was a result of Chegg's shares declining by over 98% (from its peak in 2021), and the company announcing that it would have to lay off almost a fifth of its staff members later this year, this is not the first such allegation against Google.