[xtreme]

Chegg wasn't a victim — it was a middleman profiting from locked-up educational content and exploiting students’ needs. ChatGPT didn't "lure" users; it provided a superior, accessible alternative, democratizing learning rather than hiding it behind paywalls. The argument against AI due to resource usage is selectively blind to the inefficiencies of legacy systems like Chegg. Calling this hype is like dismissing the internet as a fad — it’s a failure of imagination. Disruption always displaces incumbents, but clinging to outdated, exploitative models is far worse than embracing a tool that genuinely empowers users.

[StableAlkyne]

Chegg felt predatory.

They had no real original content of their own, just worked solutions to homework problems they pulled from textbooks. They were good at SEO and would appear at the top. You clicked on it because it lied to you: showing you part of the content you wanted. Just enough for the search engine preview. That probably boosted them further, wasting more time by others tricked by the same fake results.

To see the rest of the answer, they wanted you to pay money and hope it was what you wanted. Who would subscribe to that other than students desperate for homework answers?

Then ChatGPT comes in without any of the scammy tactics. Sure, it's often wrong, but so are Chegg and Quora.

[demaga]

The difference here is that Chegg was actually profitable. It is still unknown if OpenAI will be.

[MBCook]

Right. It was an easy to understand example on hand of a business that was DESTROYED.

I’m sure there are plenty of good places that were destroyed. I just don’t have verifiable anecdotes for any others at hand.