OpenAI’s Nick Turley testified in Washington at a trial against Google, where the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to ensure competition is restored among online search engines.
Major changes are unfolding in the tech world, with the artificial intelligence (AI) wave causing a paradigm shift, just as it had promised. On Tuesday, at Google’s antitrust trial, an OpenAI executive testified that the company is interested in buying Google’s Chrome if antitrust officials compel the world’s most-used search engine to sell its most popular web browser. As per the antitrust lawsuit, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, would have to sell Chrome to help restore competition in the search engine domain.
This admission caught much traction, as it was the Head of Product at ChatGPT, Nick Turley, who made such a statement, raising questions about the future of the technology sector should such a deal come through. Turley testified in Washington at a trial against Google, where the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to ensure competition is restored among online search engines.
A judge had previously ruled that Google had flouted antitrust laws by spending billions of dollars to illegally monopolise and become the world’s default search engine. Antitrust lobbies were hopeful that this ruling would pave the way for a breakup of Alphabet, which could change online advertising, which has also been dominated by Google for years.
Turley’s statements can be negated as Google has not offered up Chrome for sale and is likely to appeal against the ruling, which claims it holds a market monopoly. Described as a historic antitrust case, on Monday, a Justice Department attorney explained that if Google does not have strong regulations, it could not be prevented from using its AI products to further its dominance among online search engines.
The DOJ is seeking an order which could force the company to sell off its Chrome search engine, among other measures, to weaken its monopoly. Prosecutors also argued that Google’s AI products are just another way to gain more traffic to its search engine. The search engine giant, on the other hand, did point out that platforms like Meta and Microsoft were competing with it by introducing their own generative AI models.
According to internal documents, Google’s lawyer argued that last year, Turley himself had written that ChatGPT, which leads the consumer chatbox market, did not consider Alphabet’s offspring to be a competition. Turley, however, defended his statement by explaining that the document was only meant to inspire OpenAI employees and that his company would nevertheless benefit from distribution partnerships.
He also went on to testify that Google had previously rejected OpenAI’s offer to use its search technology within ChatGPT. While ChatGPT uses technology of Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, Turley said that OpenAI believes in having multiple partners as it would elevate the users’ experience and product efficiencies.
He believes that the DOJ’s proposal to force Google to share search data with its rivals to enhance competition will ultimately improve ChatGPT. Search is an important part of this generative AI’s operating model, as it is required to produce answers which are up-to-date and factual. Turley also admitted that ChatGPT was years away from using its own technology to answer 80% of its queries.
This antitrust suit has found that Google protects its monopoly by forging exclusive deals with tech companies like Samsung Electronics, among others, to have its search engine installed in these devices as the default browser.
Google, on the other hand, has defended itself by stating that these agreements did not prohibit these electronic companies from installing other AI products on new devices. Documents showed it has also tweaked its deals to allow companies like Samsung and Motorola to load rival search engines on their devices.
While Google believes that these non-exclusive deals must be enough to break monopolisation, the DOJ wants to go a step further and ban it from paying for the installation of its search app onto electronic devices. The trial is still underway, and should Google be forced to sell Chrome, an acquisition by OpenAI would certainly be momentous for the tech sector.
