A federal judge issued a reference sentence last year, stating that Google had become a monopolist in the internet research. But in an audition that started last week to understand how to solve the problem, the emphasis has often landed on a different technology, artificial intelligence.
In the District Court of the United States in Washington last week, a lawyer of the Department of Justice claimed that Google could use his research monopoly to become the dominant player in the Google Executives revealed internal discussions on the expansion of Gemini's scope, the company chatbot. And the managers of the artificial intelligence companies rival have said that Google's power was an obstacle to their success.
Last Wednesday, the first substantial question posed to the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, after taking the stand was also up to AI for all his 90 -minute testimony, the topic has arrived more than two dozens of times.
“I think it's one of the most dynamic moments in the sector,” said Pichai. “I saw users' domestic screens with, how, from seven to nine chatbot applications that are trying, playing and training.”
An antitrust cause on the past has actually turned into a struggle for the future, since the government and Google face the changes proposed to the business giant business that could move the course of the AI race.
For more than 20 years, Google search engine has dominated the way people got online answers. Now the Federal Court is essentially struggling with it the Silicon Valley giant will dominate the next era of how people receive information on the Internet, while consumers are aimed at a new artificial intelligence chatbot harvest to answer questions, find solutions to their problems and know the world.
At the hearing, the government's lawyers claimed that Google's monopolistic tactics in search could be applied to make its Gemelli chatbot an omnipresent artificial intelligence product. This cannot be allowed to occur in the emerging field of the AI, the government said, to ensure that consumers have choices of products for use well in the future.
Google claimed that the Court does not need to intervene because the rapid growth of Opeeni-the start-up AI which helps the product AI Power Apple on the iPhone-and other rivals show that the market is already full of competition.
As far as judge Amit P. Mehta, who will determine the corrections in the case of research, acquires in these artificial intelligence topics could remodel the fierce competition to guide technology. Google is already a leading artificial intelligence player, with Gemini attracting over 350 million monthly active users, according to test data. Any measure to hinder his efforts or help his competitors would have great implications for that race.
The government asked the Court to force Google to sell its Chrome browser and share data with rivals, including search results and announcements, among other measures.
Government requests for the setting of monopolies are far -sighted by nature, trying to cancel years of damaged competition and open the markets to new rivals. From the point of view of the government, “you don't want to have spent five years and a lot of agency resources bringing a case that really does nothing,” said John Newman, deputy director of the competition office of the Federal Trade Commission during the Biden administration.
A Google spokesman indicated the declaration of opening of the company's main lawyer, John Schmidtlein, who said that the artificial intelligence market “performs extraordinarily competitive”. The Department of Justice refused to comment.
This year's hearing follows the judge of Judge Mehta of 2024 according to which Google had illegally protected his monopoly by paying companies such as Apple, Mozilla and Samsung for its search engine that would automatically show up in web browsers and on smartphones.
Since the beginning of the audition, the government's lawyers have put the IA and the center in the foreground.
The first witness, associate professor of the University of Texas of Computer Science, Gregory Durrett, gave Judge Mehta a course of accident in response to the AI, judge Mehta asked questions about how chatbots work and how they were incorporated into Google products.
The government presented documents showing that Google last year had taken an agreement with wireless carriers and smartphones producers who would have given the positioning of Prime Gemini on the devices together with its search engine. He remembered the offers that Google had signed to obtain the primary positioning for its search engine.
Google decided not to go on with the Gemini plan with wireless vectors and smartphone producers after the judgment of the judge of last year. In the end he reached a separate agreement with Samsung to put Gemelli on Samsung's smartphones, the documents showed.
A Google manager testified that the agreement with Samsung gave the smartphone manufacturer the opportunity to work with other artificial intelligence services. Pichai testified that the company had focused on the signature of agreements in line with its proposal for remedies, according to which smartphones producers should have more freedom to decide which Google installing apps.
The leaders of Rivale Artificial Intelligence Company, such as Openai, also testified that the changes proposed by the Government to Google's activities would make them easier to create products and reach consumers.
Nicholas Turley, the chief of the product for Opens's Chatgpt, declared on the stand that his company had launched a prototype research tool called SearchGpt in July and asked Google for an agreement to access its data. But Google refused Openi because “it would imply too many complexities”, according to an e -mail by an Openii manager.
“I was aware that Google may not be encouraged to offer us good terms given the competitive nature of some of our offers,” said Turley. If judge Mehta asked Google to share more data with Openi, the company would be able to “build a better product faster,” he added.
Openi would also be interested in buying Google's Chrome browser if it were on sale, added Turley.
(The New York Times sued Openai and its partner, Microsoft, for violation of the copyright of news related to artificial intelligence systems. They denied illegal.)
Dmitry Sheavelenko, Chief Business Officer of the perplexity of the start of research AI, testified that his company had tried to reach agreements with the telephone companies to automatically offer his chatbot, but one of them already had an agreement with Google.
That company “really likes our assistant, think it is excellent for their users, but they cannot get out of their google obligations and therefore they are unable to change the predefined assistant on the device,” he said.
Google's lawyers replied that the company was not blocking smartphones producers in excessively restrictive agreements to offer twins. They repeatedly said that many artificial intelligence companies were flourishing and referred to data showing that Chatgpt was used more widely than any other chatbot.
“I think Chatgpt is going well without the remedies in this case,” Schmidtlein said in his opening declaration. “These companies are in competition well without the remedies of the complaints.”