The advanced and consequential antitrust trial in opposition to Google and its search engine practices lately heard its closing arguments, and the tech large is already planning to enchantment. In a post made on X, Google confirmed it could file an enchantment, explaining that the proposed options went too far and “would hurt customers.”
“We are going to watch for the Court docket’s opinion,” Google wrote. “And we nonetheless strongly consider the Court docket’s authentic choice was improper, and look ahead to our eventual enchantment.”
To problem Google’s dominance of the search engine market, the Division of Justice took on the tech large by filing a lawsuit again in 2020. The monumental antitrust case has steadily advanced through the years, with the DOJ proposing cures like Google opening up its search engine tech to licensing, prohibiting agreements with machine makers like Apple and Samsung to make sure Google was the default search engine and forcing the sale of the Chrome browser and the open-source Chromium challenge.
Based on Google, the Division of Justice’s proposed actions would open customers as much as “very actual privateness points,” go away the federal government accountable for consumer knowledge and assist “well-funded opponents.” As a substitute, Google provided to loosen its agreements to permit different search engines like google on gadgets and create an oversight committee to observe the corporate’s actions.
Since then, the federal decide presiding over the case, Amit Mehta of the US District Court docket for the District of Columbia, ruled in August 2024 that Google had an unlawful monopoly of the search engine market. The decide agreed with the DOJ that Google proudly owning the Chrome browser offers it an unfair benefit because it might use its search engine benefit to drive extra site visitors and generate extra income for the corporate.
The tip results of this antitrust trial might have critical implications for the way forward for AI, which is intently tied to the search engine market. Based on Google, this ruling might permit different firms with AI chatbots to step in and dominate the search engine market as an alternative. Throughout the trial, Nick Turley, an OpenAI government, testified that the corporate can be interested by buying Chrome if Google was pressured to promote it.
