Google search monopoly trial begins with focus on AI risk

Washington — Alphabet’s Google needs strong measures imposed on it to prevent it from using its artificial intelligence (AI) products to extend its dominance in online search, a US department of justice attorney said as trial in the historic antitrust case began on Monday.

The outcome of the trial could fundamentally reshape the internet by unseating Google as the go-to portal for information online. The department has compared the lawsuit to its past efforts to break up AT&T, Microsoft and Standard Oil.

“The time to tell Google and all other monopolists who are out there listening, and they are listening, that there are consequences when you break the antitrust laws,” department attorney David Dahlquist said during his opening statement.

The department and a broad coalition of state attorneys-general seek to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser and take other measures to restore competition even as search evolves to overlap with generative AI products such as ChatGPT.

“This court’s remedy should be forward-looking and not ignore what is on the horizon,” Dahlquist said.

Witnesses from Perplexity AI and OpenAI will testify about how search and AI overlap and how Google’s dominance affects their business, Dahlquist said.

John Schmidtlein, a partner at Williams & Connolly, told US district judge Amit Mehta the department of justice’s proposals amount to “a wishlist for competitors looking to get the benefits of Google’s extraordinary innovations”.

AI competitors “would like handouts as well even though they are competing just fine”, he said.

Google argues that its AI products are outside the scope of the case, which focused on search engines. Adopting the proposed remedies “would hold back American innovation at a critical juncture”, Google executive Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a blog post on Sunday.

The company plans to appeal the final ruling in the case.

Exclusive agreements

Antitrust enforcers have proposed far-reaching measures designed to quickly open the search market and give new competitors a leg up.

Their proposals include ending exclusive agreements in which Google pays billions of dollars annually to Apple and other device vendors to make Google the default search engine on their tablets and smartphones.

Google would also have to license search results to competitors, among other requirements. And it would be made to sell its Android mobile operating system if other remedies fail to restore competition.

Google sees the proposals as giving away its hard-won innovations to rivals, and said the court should stick to making its default agreements nonexclusive.

Ending Google’s payments to device makers and browser developers would raise the cost of smartphones and jeopardise the existence of companies such as Mozilla, Google claims.

Google plans to call witnesses from Mozilla, Verizon and Apple, which launched a failed bid to intervene in the case.

The case is part of an antitrust crackdown on Big Tech started during the first Trump administration that shows no signs of slowing, despite overtures tech companies and their executives have made to the White House.

Assistant attorney-general Gail Slater and other justice department antitrust officials were in court to show that the case, started under Trump and carried forward under former president Joe Biden, proposes “non-partisan” remedies and has “the full support of the DOJ [justice department] both past and present”, Dahlquist said.

Slater recently celebrated a win in another antitrust case against Google on Thursday over advertising technology. The case was filed during Biden’s term.

Meta Platforms is facing its own antitrust trial over the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Reuters