Competition for any advantage in the booming artificial intelligence industry is so fierce that the fighting is spilling over into US courtrooms.
It happened this past week in the start of a trial that will determine whether Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) search empire will be broken up by federal Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled last year that Google operated an illegal online search monopoly.
Discussion of AI dominated the early testimony as executives from ChatGPT creator OpenAI and AI startup Perplexity AI took the stand against Google, offering a view into the battle for AI preeminence between established tech giants and newer upstarts.
“The future of competition in search actually might be in generative AI,” said Jenner and Block antitrust litigation lawyer Douglas Litvack. “That’s one thing the court will need to grapple with.”
ChatGPT can be counted among Google’s most well-positioned search rivals, with roughly 600 million monthly active users. Google’s competing chatbot Gemini, developed by its AI division DeepMind, trails with roughly 350 million monthly active users.
But federal prosecutors view Google’s unsurpassed level of search data amassed through its decades-old search monopoly as a threat to emerging search products that rely on AI.
They argue that a way to level the playing field is to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser, license its search data, and block it from using its AI tools to preference its own products.
Popular AI virtual assistant apps on a smartphone: ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Anthropic Claude, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot. ·Kenneth Cheung via Getty Images
Some AI upstarts were ready this past week to support the government’s arguments. Nick Turley, OpenAI’s chief product officer, told the courtroom that OpenAI would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser if the judge were to rule it should be sold. OpenAI’s main backer is tech giant Microsoft (MSFT), a longtime Google rival.
Owning Chrome, Turley said, would allow OpenAI to “introduce users into what an AI-first [browser] looks like,” according to reports.
Turley testified that OpenAI’s large language models that support its technologies, including ChatGPT, can’t fully scale without access to Google’s traditional search results. Google previously rejected a bid from OpenAI to use its search technology within ChatGPT, according to Turley.
Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer for Perplexity AI, also testified that Google’s search dominance and restrictive distribution agreements have impeded its AI-driven search tools and those created by its competitors. Perplexity AI also has its own online chatbot, or search “answer” engine.
A representative for Google told Yahoo Finance that the DOJ’s proposals would chill rather than spur AI innovation at a critical moment when the technology is in the early days of a paradigm shift.
The AI market is seeing an extraordinary amount of competition, the representative said, as startup funding continues to flow to Google rivals that are attracting millions of new users.
Search revenue nonetheless helped Google’s parent, Alphabet, post strong first quarter earnings last Thursday.
The judge’s decision could significantly impact what companies will emerge as the dominant AI-powered search platforms, according to Anand Rao, a professor of applied data science and AI at Carnegie Mellon University.
He expects AI-driven “answer engines” to eclipse traditional search within a couple of years.
“Search is really under threat,” Rao said.
Eric Chaffee, co-director for Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s business law center, said a forced divestment of Chrome would be a multifront blow to Google.
“Because Chrome is widely used, the ability to build and distribute AI features into it gives Google a distinct advantage,” he said. “If Google is forced to sell Chrome, that advantage goes away.”
OpenAI’s interest in Chrome, Rao suspects, is more heavily tied to its distribution goals than its desire to enhance the quality of search results, even though OpenAI and other chatbots have struggled with errors called “hallucinations” in their search query answers.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. (Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images) ·JOEL SAGET via Getty Images
“I don’t think that they need all of that data that Google has,” Rao said. “It’s more the channel and the distribution that Chrome offers is probably what they would be interested in.”
Litvack said forced sharing of Google’s index would be a “radical” remedy that would conflict with the Supreme Court’s liability decision in Verizon Communications v. Trinko. The court ruled that there is generally no duty to aid competitors.
“The antitrust laws don’t require even a monopolist to share its competitive advantage with rivals,” Litvack said. “And forced sharing has a lot of problems to it — one is it requires the court to be a regulator, and ongoing monitor.”
Guardrails that prevent Google from using AI to reinforce its search products could also come with problems.
“Every company has AI embedded, whether it’s Canva to Salesforce (CRM) to Oracle (ORCL) to Workday (WDAY),” Rao said. “It’s almost impossible not to do it. If they can’t do that…then that puts them at a disadvantage.”
“The future for them … is to embed AI into their products and make those products more of a money spinner. I can’t see any other path.”
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Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
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