Conquering generative artificial intelligence (AI) is the next battlefield for big tech platforms, but Google could be on the back foot thanks to the response to its dominance in search.
The proposed remedies recommended by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to rid Google of its alleged monopolistic behavior in search have the potential to hamper its future developments in gen AI.
Google, responding to the multiple potential remedies from the DOJ, naturally wants to pull focus back to the $20 billion deals it struck with Apple to keep its search on rival devices, rather than entertain some of these border topics, like data sharing with rivals and splitting up its crawlers.
“Even though data powers Google’s AI products, Google is not light years ahead in the AI race at this point, and, arguably, is a couple of steps behind Microsoft and OpenAI,” said Alan Chapell, president of privacy-focused law firm Chapell & Associates. “And search, as we knew it, like Googling information, has already evaporated.”
While it’s not known the ultimate direction Judge Amit Mehta will take, what is clear is that it will be a long ride. Proposed remedies won’t take place until April of next year, with a ruling in August, which Google plans to appeal.
Whatever the decision, there’s a delicate balance between keeping Google’s power in check and promoting a more competitive landscape, sources told ADWEEK. There will also be the matter of preserving innovation and keeping in tact systems that the rest of the industry, especially smaller players, rely on.
Decoupling AI crawlers from search
One proposal from the DOJ includes “requiring Google to allow websites crawled for Google search to opt out of training or appearing in any Google-owned artificial-intelligence product or feature.”
Publishers have groused about being unable to opt out of Google’s crawlers that scrape their sites for gen AI use cases and model training, while still being able to be indexed in search.
Sure, publishers would need to weigh up not appearing in Google Overview, and the potential traffic or revenue that could generate, but that would also free them up to strike deals with other AI tech firms like OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic to sell the data the platforms are hungry for.