Google’s monopoly delayed innovations like AI-based ChatGPT, Justice Department says

By Leah Nylen

ChatGPT and other technological innovations could have been launched years ago if Google had not monopolized the search market, the Justice Department told a federal court Thursday.

Days after Microsoft Corp. announced it would incorporate OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology into its Bing search engine, Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it would launch its own conversational AI product, said Kenneth Dintzer, lead attorney for the Department of Justice in his antitrust case. case against the search giant.

That “shows what the real competition will do,” Dintzer told judge Amit Mehta. “What has been happening for the last 12 years is that Google has maintained its monopoly. Would we have seen ChatGPT six years earlier? Would we see five other competitors competing for search? Those are questions that none of us can answer.”

Google has asked Mehta to throw out two antitrust cases brought by the Justice Department and state attorneys general ahead of a trial scheduled for September. The Justice Department and a group of states sued separately in 2020, alleging that Google’s agreements to ensure its search engine is preloaded on web browsers and mobile devices violate antitrust laws. Mehta is overseeing both lawsuits.

Google’s lawyer, John Schmidtlein, acknowledged that agreements with Apple Inc. and smartphone makers to be the default search engine give the company “an advantage” but that it does not violate antitrust laws.

“There is absolutely an advantage, but it is not insurmountable,” he said.

Schmidtlein’s comments answered Mehta’s questions about whether Google’s default status gives it an advantage that competitors can’t match.

“These deals have a self-reinforcing quality,” Mehta said. “What I find unique is that the product gets better just by having the default value. Google, by virtue of having the default values ​​year over year, collects more data and has the ability to return more accurate and efficient search results.”

Google first signed a contract with Apple to be the default search engine in its Safari browser in 2003, when Google was one of many search engines and Apple’s Mac computers were only a small slice of the market, Schmidtlein said. The amount of money that Google pays to Apple is confidential, but it is in the billions of dollars every year.

Mehta also pressed Google on why it continues to pay for default position today when it is the undisputed leader in search.

“They are paying to expose their product and make it available. Whether people switch is up to the user,” Schmidtlein said.

However, Dintzer, the Justice Department lawyer, said Google’s insistence on exclusivity and the size of those payments are key.

“They are paying billions of dollars for these breaches. Google keeps saying, ‘It’s because people love us.’ If people wanted it, they wouldn’t be paying billions of dollars,” he said.

Mehta rejected some of the Justice Department’s arguments, asking it to specify what Google should have done differently.

The company should have removed the exclusivity provision in its contracts once it gained a monopoly, Dintzer said. That would have allowed potential rivals to bid for hotspots in smartphones and browsers, he said, and would have allowed companies like Apple or Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox browser, to design their products differently to give consumers more choice.