A senior executive at AI pioneer OpenAI has this week made a surprising admission in a federal courtroom, where the DoJ case to break up Google’s business is being heard.
Reuters reported that ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley testified on Tuesday at Google’s antitrust trial in Washington, that OpenAI would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome if antitrust enforcers are successful in forcing the Alphabet unit to sell the popular web browser.
Earlier this week lawyers for the US Justice Department (DoJ) had argued for strong measures against Google in the remedies phase of its antitrust trial in Washington, including forcing it to sell off its Chrome browser.
Antitrust trial
The DoJ prosecutors had said the judge should look ahead to the growth of artificial intelligence and include this in the breakup that the government is seeking.
The DoJ lawyers argued Google’s search monopoly could give it advantages in AI, and that its AI products are another way to lead users to its search engine.
“This is the time for the court to tell Google and all other monopolists who are out there listening, and they are listening, that there are consequences when you break the antitrust laws,” Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist had told Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia in his opening statement.
Now it has emerged that OpenAI executive Nick Turley testified that OpenAI would be interested in buying the Chrome browser, if Google is forced to sell it.
Google of course has not offered to sell Chrome, and the search engine giant is planning to appeal the ruling that it holds a monopoly.
Google monopoly
Judge Mehta had ruled last August that Google’s search business constituted an illegal monopoly, in a landmark ruling.
Judge Amit Mehta had stated “the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
Judge Mehta had found that Google had violated antitrust law by spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine.
Then in November 2024 DoJ prosecutors confirmed that as part of its “structural remedies”, they would ask the judge to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser, which could be worth as much as $20 billion if the judge orders its sale.
The DoJ also said the judge should consider Google’s ownership of the Android operating system, and halt default search engine contracts with the likes of Apple, Samsung, Mozilla etc, among other demands.
Google had labelled the DoJ’s structural remedies as a “staggering proposal” that would harm America’s tech leadership.
Google had also argued that it renders a valuable service by maintaining the Chrome open-source underlying code, which is used by other browser makers, and if the browser were sold off this might no longer be the case.
Google paid $26.3bn to firms such as Apple and Samsung under search deals in 2021.
And it is not just Apple.
Google also pays Samsung, Mozilla and others to make it the default search engine in their devices and web browsers.
This is not the only antitrust challenge Google is currently facing in the United States.
Google was this month dealt a further setback when another judge ruled that it held an illegal monopoly in advertising technology.
