Google to appeal online search antitrust decision

Google is set to challenge an antitrust ruling over alleged anti-competitive practices in online search.

"We will wait for the Court's opinion. And we still strongly believe the Court's original decision was wrong, and look forward to our eventual appeal," Google said in a post on X.

The original ruling states that Google illegally monopolized online search and related advertising markets. The US Department of Justice said the company should at least sell off its Google Ad Manager platform.

The DOJ wants Google to share search data and end multibillion-dollar payments to smartphone makers like Apple to be the default search engine on new devices. In 2022, Google paid Apple approximately $20 billion for the privilege - which significantly contributes to the company’s revenue.

Antitrust enforcers are wary about Google’s search dominance giving it a strategic advantage in developing artificial intelligence (AI) products like its Gemini platform.

At the hearing, John Schmidtlein, an attorney for Google, said that the company has already addressed the concerns about competition in AI by no longer entering exclusive agreements with wireless carriers and smartphone makers. This allows them to load rival search and AI applications, potentially lowering the barrier to entering the market.

And yet, the enforcers remain concerned that Google’s vast search data reserves put it in an unfair position to solidify its market dominance by swiftly training its AI models.

On Friday, a federal judge in Washington said he is considering making Google take less aggressive measures to restore competition in online search than the 10-year regime proposed by antitrust enforcers.

"Ten years may seem like a short period, but in this space, a lot can change in weeks," said US District Judge Amit Mehta.

According to him, it is unlikely that an alternate default search engine in Apple's Safari browser will come from rival search engines like DuckDuckGo or Bing.

"If anything it's going to be one of these AI companies that can do more than just search. And why? Because maybe people don't want 10 blue links anymore,” he said.

Nick Turley, OpenAI's product head for ChatGPT, said the company would be interested in buying Chrome if Google is forced to sell it.