Google CEO Sundar Pichai has taken to court to slam plans by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to curb Google’s search monopoly and force the company to share its search index and ranking algorithms with competitors at minimal cost. He says the proposed measures are so radical that they could threaten the very existence of Google search.
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«”The data-sharing proposal is so big, so out of scope,” Pichai said. He said it “feels like a de facto divestiture of search” and all of his intellectual property and technology from 25 years of research. He also emphasized that it would allow anyone to completely recreate the company’s tech stack, which is the result of years of work, not unfair competition.
«”If the government demands that everything be given away for pennies, it is unclear how further investment in innovation can be justified,” Pichai said during the antitrust trial. However, as The Verge writes, the authorities insist that only tough measures can destroy Google’s dominance.
Google’s lawyers pointed out that the company spent about $49 billion on research and development (R&D) last year alone, including search, artificial intelligence, and other projects. If government measures deprive Google of the benefit of these investments, the company’s innovative potential would be seriously damaged, according to the company’s management.
The scandal surrounding Google’s dominance in the search industry has been brewing for a long time. US authorities believe that, thanks to large financial investments in Chrome, contracts with Apple and other device makers, as well as a huge amount of user data, the corporation has created conditions that do not give any chance to new players in the search market.
The Chrome browser has become a separate topic. The government wants to force Google to sell it, and companies like OpenAI and Yahoo have already expressed interest. But Pichai, who once led the team that created it, said that no one else could care so much about the browser’s security and development. “We have invested tens of billions of dollars in Chrome. In addition, more than 90% of the open source code of Chromium, on which many popular browsers are built, was written by us,” he emphasized.
Artificial intelligence has also been in the spotlight. The head of Google is confident that AI will transform Google Search, but rejected the idea that chatbots will completely replace search engines. However, he confirmed negotiations with Apple: by mid-year, Gemini could become one of the AI systems in the Apple ecosystem along with ChatGPT.
The DOJ believes that only radical measures will ensure fair competition. Google, however, insists that if they are forced to share technology, innovation will stop. “What’s the point of investing if everyone else gets our developments?” Pichai summed up.