Judge examines restrictions on Google's AI strategy in antitrust proceedings

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In the US antitrust proceedings against Google, District Judge Amit Mehta is questioning how far he should go to restrict Google's monopoly in internet search. At issue is whether Google should be restricted in its ability to compete against rivals such as ChatGPT with its AI product Gemini.

"We're so focused on Generative AI because it's the new entry point for search," said Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist during closing arguments in the antitrust case against Google. "It's a gateway to search", the Wall Street Journal quotes him as saying.

Drastic measures demanded

The US Department of Justice, which filed the lawsuit in 2020, is demanding far-reaching measures. Google is to be forced to sell its Chrome browser. The company should also be prohibited from continuing to pay Apple to be the default search engine. The company is also to be obliged to share search data with competitors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice argues that these unusually harsh conditions are justified by a legal standard that was created over 20 years ago in the case against Microsoft.

Google's lawyer John Schmidtlein disagreed: the government had not met the required standard of proof for such drastic measures. The Department of Justice had not proven that Google's exclusive contracts with device manufacturers such as Apple were the main reason for maintaining the monopoly.

Decision with far-reaching consequences

The court is considering restricting Google's payments to Apple, which could change the way Google is embedded in Safari. Its decision could affect future agreements between Apple, Google and other companies, particularly regarding the presentation of AI options on dominant platforms.

Google is currently estimated to pay Apple around $20 billion a year to be the default search engine in the Safari browser. The case could reduce Apple's annual profits by billions of US dollars, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Battle for the future of AI

According to court statements, the search engine giant is now also paying Samsung and Motorola to pre-install or integrate Gemini on their devices. The Ministry of Justice sees this as an attempt to monopolize the next generation of internet search and is calling for a ban.

Alphabet shares fell in the meantime after an Apple manager testified in court that Google searches in Safari had declined for the first time in two decades. He also hinted that Apple would likely offer AI options such as ChatGPT or Perplexity in Safari within the next year.

Google stated in a blog post that the total number of search queries had increased.

Data sharing as a point of contention

The Ministry of Justice is pushing for younger companies such as OpenAI to be given access to search data that Google would have to share under the proposed conditions. These companies need this data to compete effectively with Gemini.

Judge Mehta questioned whether AI companies that don't want to build traditional search engines should be given access to Google's valuable data. "It seems to me that you want to bring this other technology into this definition of a general search engine market, which I don't think quite fits," the judge said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Sale of Chrome as an option

The court asked numerous other questions and did not indicate which way it was leaning. The judge asked both sides for new ideas and raised the possibility of making a ban on Google's payments to device makers like Apple contingent on the failure of other measures.

He also asked whether forcing the divestiture of Chrome would be "a little cleaner and a little more elegant" than other measures to improve search competition. Schmidtlein, Google's lawyer, countered that the potential harms of selling Chrome would outweigh the speculative benefits.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, testified that Google hopes to finalize a Gemini integration agreement with Apple by the middle of this year. This would allow the iPhone manufacturer to use Gemini to respond to user queries. Apple already offers this option with OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Judge Mehta plans to issue a ruling in August. Google, which currently holds a market share of around 90 percent in online searches, has announced that it will appeal against the judge's decision.

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