Google returned to federal court to navigate a vital shift towards artificial intelligence (AI) that could undermine its power, while dodging the US Department of Justice’s attempt to defeat the Internet empire.
The legal and technical threats facing Google on Friday were one of the key issues being analyzed during discussions on the closing of legal proceedings determining changes imposed on the company as the dominant search engine declared illegal monopoly by US District Judge Amit Mehta last year.
Justice Department lawyers are trying to convince Mehta to order a radical shakeup that includes a ban for Google to lock search engines as the default for smart devices, and an order that involves the company requesting that the company sell chrome browsers.
Google’s lawyers say only a few concessions are needed, especially as the upheaval caused by advances in artificial intelligence is already reshaping the search environment. Alternative Conversation Search Options are deployed from AI startups that want to acquire Frantia of the next technology using the Department of Justice’s four-year-old case.
Mehta used the hearing on Friday to ask lawyers on both sides and pointed questions, suggesting that he was seeking an intermediate ground between the proposed relief measures for the two camps.
“We’re not looking to kneel Google,” the judge said, adding that the goal was to “kickstart” the ability of “competitors” to challenge the search giant’s advantage.
After the all-day closing discussion, Meta will spend most of the next few months pondering the decision to publish on Labor Day (September 1) in the United States. Google has already pledged to appeal the ruling that it branded its search engine as a monopoly.
ai inflection point
Both sides of this showdown agree that AI is the industry’s future inflection point, but have different views on how the shift will affect Google.
The Justice Department has argued that AI technology itself does not suppress Google’s power, and that additional legal suppression must be slapped by search engines, the main reason why parent company Alphabet Inc is valued at $2 trillion.
Mehta showed in court Friday that it was undecided how much AI that will shake up the search market should be incorporated into his upcoming ruling. “This is something I’ve struggled with,” Meta said early in the hearing.
Prosecutor David Dahlquist urged judges to issue positive relief measures that “opened” the search market to compete, and urged Google not to allow it to use search monopolies to unfairly profit in AI races.
Google has already deployed AI to convert search engines into answer engines. This has helped to maintain the perch as the main gateway of the Internet so far, despite being done by alternatives such as Openai and confusion.
The Justice Department claims that the sale of the Chrome browser that Google CEO Sundar Pichai helped build nearly 20 years ago is one of the most effective measures against Google.
Executives from both Openai and Perplexity testified last month that if Mehta ordered a sale, they would become avid bidder for the Chrome browser.
Google’s lawyer John Schmidtlein said on Friday that AI companies should “get to work” with their products, rather than trying to persuade the courts of unfair access to Google’s innovations.
The debate about Google’s fate also drew opinions from Apple, mobile app developers, legal scholars and startups.
Apple, which has raised over $2 billion a year to make Google the default search engine for iPhones and other devices, has filed a brief against the ban on such lucrative lock-in contracts for a decade proposed by the Department of Justice.
Apple told the judge that by banning contracts, it would take the company away from what its company is aiming to do its own research, and the ban could make Google even stronger. The Cupertino, California company also told judges it would not force judges to ban it from building its own search engine to compete with Google.
In other filings, a group of legal scholars said the Justice Department’s proposal to sell chrome would be an inappropriate penalty to inject unfair government interference into the business of the company.
Meanwhile, former Federal Trade Commission officials James Cooper and Andrew Stever warned that another proposal that requires Google to share data with rival search engines “doesn’t take into account the long-standing developments made by users in regards to privacy, security and stewardship.”
The App Association, a group representing most small software developers, advised Mehta not to adopt the Department of Justice’s proposed changes due to ripple effects across the technology industry.
Hobbing Google in the way the Justice Department envisions makes it even more difficult for startups to achieve their goal of winning, writes App Association. “Developers will be overcome by uncertainty,” the group claims if Google is torn apart.
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