Google CEO Sundar Pichai
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Late Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department filed sweeping proposed remedies within the landmark antitrust case against Google, wherein a federal judge ruled earlier this yr that the corporate had an illegal monopoly in the web search market. Key demands include: forcing Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, banning multi-billion dollar distribution deals like Google’s with Apple, or potentially stopping Google from requiring Android phone makers to integrate Google apps on their devices .
But beyond these headline-grabbing demands, the federal government has also included provisions that would hamper Google’s future within the race to manage the long run of AI. The DOJ suggested that Google must sell all shares of AI corporations with technology that would compete in search and divest itself inside six months of a final court ruling. The agency also beneficial stopping any recent acquisitions, joint ventures or partnerships with AI corporations that compete in search.
Specifically, if the judge within the case agrees, it could mean forcing Google to sell its investment in Anthropic, the corporate founded by OpenAI defectors in 2021 that would reportedly be price as much as $40 billion. Last yr, Google announced it could invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after Amazon announced a $4 billion take care of the corporate months earlier. On Wednesday, regulators within the United Kingdom cleared Google’s investment and said they might not conduct a full investigation to review the deal after an initial investigation.
Anthropic is the maker of Claude, a language model that may generate answers to questions, much like Google’s own Gemini model, which was integrated into Google’s search engine earlier this yr. Although the startup doesn’t promote Claude as a search product, such chatbots are widely seen as a threat to Google search. Other startups, like Perplexity, backed by Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, are taking a more open approach to competing with Google. “It’s a good morning for Perplexity,” said a distinguished AI investor Forbes. Also price noting is that the DOJ’s proposal would exclude Perplexity as a possible Google acquisition goal. (Disclosure: Forbes has threatened legal motion against Perplexity for plagiarizing our content.)
The filing also proposes that Google provide all publishers and content creators – including those on Google-owned YouTube – a simple method to opt out of getting their content used to coach or optimize Google’s AI models or other AI products resolve and speak out against it with the intention to take revenge on those that resolve for it.
“The old companies are trying to take control of the new technology and insulate themselves from displacement.”
As artificial intelligence continues to take over the technology world, the federal government is attempting to be sure that an emerging and powerful recent technology is just not unfairly dominated by the established giants, said John Kwoka, a professor of business and antitrust law at Northeastern University.
“The legacy companies are trying to take control of the new technology and protect themselves against displacement,” he said Forbes. “This is part of a forward-looking proposed solution.”
But it is also outside the scope since AI wasn’t an enormous issue on this case. “It seems so far beyond anything that was the case in the original case that I can’t take it seriously,” said George Hay, a professor of antitrust law at Cornell Law School.
Google declined to comment beyond that point Blog post published Thursday by Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, who called the DOJ filing an “extreme proposal” that will “diminish our investments in artificial intelligence, perhaps the most important innovation of our time, in which Google plays a leading role.” .”
While the DOJ proposal focuses specifically on AI investments that will boost Google’s search, the tech giant is investing in other AI corporations that give attention to broader use cases. According to PitchBook, it has stakes in Runway, which develops AI to generate videos, and Tools For Humanity, the corporate founded by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman that manages the Worldcoin cryptocurrency and makes AI authentication tools.
Anthropic declined to comment. Runway and Tools For Humanity didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment. Google didn’t reply to questions on these investments.
It can be unclear whether the divestment proposals would apply to Google parent Alphabet’s two enterprise firms – GV and CapitalG – for the reason that DOJ’s case focused directly on Google and never the parent company’s other subsidiaries. GV referred inquiries to Google, which declined to comment. CapitalG didn’t reply to a request for comment.
The DOJ’s monopoly case was heard last yr and examined Google’s search engine, the lifeline of the corporate’s sprawling digital promoting business, which generates the majority of parent company Alphabet’s $307.4 billion in annual revenue. During the trial, the federal government argued that Google used several illegal tactics to determine and maintain a monopoly in online search, reminiscent of signing an agreement with Apple price tens of billions of dollars that made Google the default search engine on iPhones and other Apple products. Google has said its market dominance is predicated on the standard of its products and argues that it offers consumers easy ways to vary their default settings. Earlier this yr, Judge Amit Mehta ruled against Google, triggering a second trial to find out possible remedies that’s scheduled to start in April. Judge Mehta’s decision is predicted next August.
William Kovocic, a former FTC chairman and now a law professor at George Washington University, said Google would likely argue that the AI restrictions would hamper the corporate and create a technological opening for China.
Google has been a frontrunner in AI for years, launching its Google Brain lab in 2011 and buying the much-lauded AI lab DeepMind in 2014. Three years later, the corporate sparked the present generative AI wave when Google Brain researchers invented Transformers, the AI architecture foundation for Gemini and ChatGPT. But despite the early lead, Google was caught flat-footed when OpenAI released ChatGPT two years ago, launching Google into the market with a technology it had invented and sparking a worldwide hype about AI.
OpenAI was supported partly by its $13 billion take care of Microsoft, which provided the startup with support and computing power. The partnership also revitalized a stodgy Microsoft, letting CEO Satya Nadella boast that his company made Google “dance” when Microsoft integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. The DOJ’s AI proposals would prevent Google from getting into similar partnerships.
But due to Google’s extensive work on this area, it’s unlikely that the AI proposals would significantly hold the corporate back, said Bob O’Donnell, founding father of research firm Technalysis. Unlike Google, Microsoft needed the OpenAI deal since it did not have the in-house AI capabilities. “Even if their hands are tied and they are prevented from moving forward, they have been working on AI longer than anyone else,” he said. “I think they would still be fine.”
Additional reporting by Alex Konrad.
