Katie Dillon

I own where you can plan your San Diego vacation, book luxury hotels worldwide that I review, and buy theme park tickets for less.

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

NEW: Universal Studios Hollywood Fan Fest and Southern California Resident tickets! Get the details and discounts ⬇️

https://t.co/yIMxoeKecP

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Updated for 2026: The eight neighborhoods people choose the most when deciding where to stay in San Diego. Which one would you pick? https://t.co/okT8yMxOLs

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Every day, I help families figure out which things to do in San Diego with kids make sense for their trips. Our December 2025 update is here!
https://t.co/nl4TZFHlD7

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

It was a pleasure to chat about Thanksgiving in San Diego and @delcoronado with @TravelLeisure and why we are one of the best destinations for winter holidays! https://t.co/e5qZH2HnwF

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Grateful to be featured as our clients love it here-->The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel Celebrates 40 Years With Redesign via @forbes https://t.co/ONT6xIBXz4

[Sicily/NAfrica❤️ @SistasicilyN]

My local guide to Christmas events in San Diego and fun holiday activities includes photos with Santa, tree lightings, and other fun holiday activities. https://t.co/9vOb7LKGSu via @lajollamom

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

If you’re flying out of San Diego during the shutdown, get to the airport early. Terminal 2 TSA lines near Alaska are wrapped around the terminal.

They are much shorter on the other side of the terminal by Delta. It’s worth the walk.

Or sign up for Clear and breeze through (by Delta only).✈️

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

🎉 Kids Free San Diego is here!

100+ deals all October — kids get in free with a paid adult

Locals + visitors, it’s one of the best times to explore San Diego. I share how to redeem and what to look out for.

👉 https://t.co/1dBGGwWlIU

[Floaties Swim School @floaties]

58 Best Things to Do in San Diego With Kids in 2025! https://t.co/wcH6Dl6zwX

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

🌞 I can tell summer is coming. My whole day was spent talking to families about things to do in San Diego with kids and hotel swimming pools!

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Did you know we have a hotel booking tool that unlocks VIP perks at 2000+ luxury hotels? 🛎️
Think upgrades, daily breakfast, $100 credits, and more.
You will need the password. Grab it here → https://t.co/kSMTyGDnSk

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

🎢You have ten hours left to take advantage of the LEGOLAND California buy 3 get 1 free annual pass deal.
We broke down the passes and their benefits here-->https://t.co/g4GmHVikyg

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Evaluating LEGOLAND CA ticket deals like the Groupon flash sale? Compare before buying. Our tickets + code SAVEMORE often provide better value.

Tickets: https://t.co/Zr5piaTF0h
Code: SAVEMORE

Full savings guide: https://t.co/Rgi7JgArxi

#LEGOLAND #DiscountTickets #SanDiego #TravelDeals

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Planning a splash-filled day at LEGOLAND California Water Park? Our 2025 guide has you covered with ride details, ticket tips, and more!​ 👉 https://t.co/wT8wq6xnK3

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

Free museum passes in San Diego? YES! 🎟️ Your @SDPublicLibrary card + Discover & Go = free access to top spots! Learn the easy steps in our guide. #SanDiego #FreeMuseum #DiscoverAndGo https://t.co/MKGcdc8X2q

[Malibu Farm @Malibufarm]

https://t.co/hTZesqQvRo

[Katie Dillon @lajollamom]

🍽️ Whether you're a local or a visitor, these food tours are a fun way to explore San Diego. Food writer Carmen Varner highlights six companies offering unique food and drink experiences, from street foods to wine tastings and from Downtown to Oceanside. We also have a couple of exclusive discounts if you want to try one for yourself! https://t.co/E1rSwsh6gA

[San Diego Sheriff @SDSheriff]

A reminder from @SDSheriff: SLOW DOWN and give each other space while driving in the rain.🌧️ Keep your eyes on the road in case the driver in front of you unexpectedly stops. Also, keep your headlights on when using windshield wipers. #DriveSafe #SanDiegoWx #CAWx @NWSSanDiego @SDCaltrans

[Nate Hake @natejhake]

Google's AI Overviews = theft 🚨

And Google just got smacked with a lawsuit by Chegg -- and it's utterly fantastic ⚖️

I'm a former commercial litigator turned online travel publisher -- here are my notes from reading the complaint (link in next tweet) 👇

(warning, this summary is long & took me all morning to put together -- if you're a publisher please take 10 minutes to actually read it & share it with others)

1) Chegg is represented by the Susman Godfrey firm -- which means they are not messing around. Susman has quite the reputation as savvy, hard-charging litigators

2) Importantly, the compliant is grounded in antitrust law (NOT copyright, as I initially expected). And, goodness, it's a real banger ....

3) The complaint says the "exchange of access for traffic is the fundamental bargain that has long supported the production of content for the open commercial Web." 🎯

4) It continues: "But in recent years, Google has begun to tie its participation in this bargain to another transaction to which Chegg and other publishers do not willingly consent. As a condition of indexing publisher content for search, Google now requires publishers to also supply that content for other uses that cannibalize or preempt search referrals."

5) Chegg talks not just about AI Overviews, but also references featured snippets

6) 🫶this part -- "Google’s foray into digital publishing is designed to make Google a destination, rather than a search origination point to other websites."

7) Even if Google provided a separate opt-out for AI Overviews, it wouldn't work - because Google's monopoly power creates a collective action problem

8) A lot of fantastic points about how Google unfairly leverages its monopoly power to bend the open web to Google's will

9) Paragraph 13 is chef's kiss 🫰... "Google’s conduct is already eroding incentives for Chegg and other publishers to produce such valuable and useful content. If not abated, this trajectory threatens to leave the public with an increasingly unrecognizable Internet experience, in which users never leave Google’s walled garden and receive only synthetic, error-ridden answers in response to their queries—a
once robust but now hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust."

10) Search engines are supposed to be intermediaries between users and web publishers. The complaint quotes old-school Google saying "We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our website as quickly as possible."

11) Search is a uniquely important channel for publishers. Other channels of traffic like social media can never replace search, because that traffic is not intentional

12) "Put simply, Google’s search monopoly gives it control over online distribution for digital publishers. Google uses that power to force digital publishers to give up their content. Google then itself acts as a publisher, either by republishing portions of other digital publishers’ content or by using GAI to summarize the content. The end result is that users increasingly consume other web publishers’ content on Google’s SERP, either in abridged or derivative form, which starves those publishers of traffic and revenue."

13) Chegg calls Google's strategy for publishers "embrace, absorb, extinguish"

14) Next is an entire fantastic section recounting the history of "Google’s Transformation from a Search Engine to Web Publisher"

15) Google appropriated publisher's content in 2 phases. Phase I it calls the 'republishing phase.' The complaint talks about featured like featured snippets & People Also Ask

16) Hilariously, paragraph 63 includes a screenshot of Sundar Pichai's mug inside a SERP for "who is google's ceo"

16) "Google refers to Featured Snippets, Top Stories, and People Also Ask as “search features.” But they are separate and distinct products from search results. This is Google acting as an answer engine—not a search engine."

17) Republishing is not automatically bad, but the problem is that Google forces it on publishers as a condition for appearing in Search (of which it has a monopoly)

18) "The decision to opt out of republishing by disallowing snippets or withholding Search Index Data is a Hobson’s choice. "

19) Phase II of Google's strategy to dominate online publishing centers around AI Overviews ("GAI")

20) Complaint notes that the non-monopolists like OpenAI and Perplexity have been forced to do licensing deals with many publishers, whereas Google has largely avoided this cost thanks to its search monopoly

21) Complaint walks through the differences between LLM pre-training and RAG (a point I've been trying to educate publishers on for months and months)

22) Next is a recap of Google's LLM product history: Bard, SGE, Gemini & AI Overviews

23) @rustybrick commentary is cited quite a bit (see footnotes on pages 40, 41)

24) The transition to AI Overviews "all but completes Google’s evolution from a “search engine” to an “answer engine” that publishes answers to user’s queries. Its formerly symbiotic and complementary relationship with publishers has now become overwhelmingly parasitic and competitive."

25) Google's own marketing language directly admits that the purpose of featured snippets & AI Overviews is to prevent users from clicking throughs to publishers

26) Next section talks about how Google's unauthorized use of publisher content for AI training

27) "Google has been intentionally vague in identifying the precise data sets used to train the LLMs underlying Gemini and AI Overviews"

28) "Google’s Terms of Service indicate that it uses all the information that it collects for search indexing to train its LLMs, including Chegg’s data. "

29) Google announced Google-Extended in Sept 2023, but blocking it doesn't change that Google trained on your content or that Google uses it for RAG

30) Next section: Google poses a "fundamental threat" to online publishing 👏👏

31) Lots of discussion on how AI Overviews directly compete with and seek to replace online publishers

32) Oh WOW - in paragraph 121, Sussman dug up a pretty damning admission in a 2023 Google DeepMind presentation: Google admits Generative AI in search would "reduce referrals to content providers hurting their ability to monetize"

33) Lots of outside observers recognize the risk AI Overviews present to publishers. Footnotes cite @timsoulo among others

34) AI Overviews increase "zero click" searches

35) AI Overviews will cause a downward spiral in publishing quality - as the incentive to create gets less, quality degrades, and the whole web suffers

36) Google has put publishers in an awful position - by publishing content, they feed the very AI beast that is consuming publishers alive

27) Next, the complaint walks through the actual legal claims -- which, IMHO, are quite strong

28) First - "reciprocal dealing," an antitrust concept which "occurs when a firm with market power refuses to sell product X to a customer unless that customer agrees to sell (or give) product Y to it. In this case, the product Google is selling to (and threatening to withhold from) digital publishers is Search Referral Traffic."

29) Second - "monopoly maintenance." Basically argues that Google's use of AI constitutes a form of "rent extraction" on publishers.

30) Google is using AI to illegally entrench its search monopoly

31) Third - "Unjust enrichment" - which basically means Google has unfairly benefited at the expense of publishers via wrongful conduct.

32) "The value of Google’s models and AI products is directly related to the quality of the works that it acquires to train them and ground their outputs."

33) Finally - a recital of the counts:
I - Reciprocal Dealing in Violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act
II - Reciprocal Dealing in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act
III - Tortious Conduct in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act
IV - Unlawful Monopoly Leveraging in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act
V - Unlawful Monopolization in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act
VI - Unlawful Attempted Monopolization in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act
VII - Common Law Unjust Enrichment

34) Lastly, Chegg's request for relief is of course damages and attorney fees, but also for a permanent injunction preventing Google from engaging in unlawful conduct

35) Chegg demands a jury trial

***link to complaint in next tweet***

My overall takeaway?

This is a truly fantastic complaint.

The only thing I think it missed is Google's admission in a blog post in summer 2023 that robots(.)txt is not a sufficient consent mechanism in the AI age. But, other than that, they really did their homework and hammered a ton of points I've been railing about for years.

If you are a publisher - please share so others see! 👏👏👏