WASHINGTON (AP) – Google has an existential threat as the US government is trying to dismantle the company as a penalty to convert the revolutionary search engine into an illegal monopoly.
The drama began to reveal on Monday in a courtroom in Washington with the start of three weeks of listening sessions to determine how the company is punished to operate the monopoly in the research. In its opening arguments, the federal outlets urged the anti -monopoly to impose aspirational ways to prevent Google from using artificial intelligence to enhance its hegemony.
“This is a moment of time, we are at a turning point. Will we give up the search and hand over the market to control the monopolists, or are we letting the competition prevail and choose future generations,” said the lawyer of the Ministry of Justice David Dakkilst.
The procedures, known in the legal language as a “treatment hearing”, are scheduled to be distinguished by a review of the witnesses that include the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai.
The US Department of Justice requests a federal judge to order a fundamental drain that would prevent Google from concluding billions of dollars with Apple and other technology companies that protect its search engine from competition, and to share the valuable user data warehouse with competitors and sell its famous browser.
Google’s lawyer, John Schmidlin, said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said that the proposed treatments by the proposed government will not enhance competition, but instead it is fairly less competitive with lower technology.
“Google won its place in the market exhibition and its square,” said Schmidlin.
The moment of reckoning comes four and a half years after a year has passed since the declared lawsuit that claims that the Google search engine was offended its strength as a major gate on the Internet to stifle competition and innovate for more than a decade.
After the case finally went to the trial in 2023, a federal judge spent last year that Google had made anti -competing deals to lock it in the search engine as a place for digital information on iPhone, personal computers and other devices widely used, including those working on its Android program.
This concerned ruling issued by the American boycott judge, Amit Mihita, puts a high -risk drama that will determine the sanctions on Google’s misconduct in the research market that was set since Larry Beige and Sergey Brain company in the Silicon Valley Garage in 1998.
Since the beginning of this austerity, Google has expanded beyond the search to become a power of e -mail, digital appointment and video via the Internet, web browsing, smartphone programs and data centers.
When seizing its victory in the research case, the Ministry of Justice is now to demonstrate that radical steps should be taken to curb it in Google and her institutional mother, Alphabet Inc.
The Ministry of Justice said in documents that define its proposed penalties: “The illegal Google behavior has created an economic gallito, which spoils the ruin on the market to ensure that – regardless of what is happening – Google always wins.” “The American people are forced to accept unbridled requirements and ideological preferences for the economic metal in exchange for a search engine that the public may enjoy.”
Although the proposed sanctions were originally conducted under President Joe Biden’s mandate, it is still adopted by the Ministry of Justice during the era of President Donald Trump, whose first administration filed the case against Google. Since the change in departments, the Ministry of Justice has also tried to throw the tremendous Google Authority as a threat to freedom as well.
In his opening statement, Dackest pointed out that senior officials of the Ministry of Justice were in the room to see the procedures. He said that their presence indicated that the case obtained full support for federal monopoly organizers, in the past and present.
“The fact that this issue was introduced in 2020, and in 2023, it tried under two different departments, and 49 states were joined by the non -party nature of this issue and our proposed treatments.”
Dackest also said that Mihatta would hear a lot about artificial intelligence and said that senior executives of artificial intelligence companies, such as Openai’s Chatgpt, would be summoned to testify. He said that the means of recession in court should include rulings to ensure that Gueini of Google, a technique that relies on obstetric artificial intelligence, is not used to enhance the monopoly of current research.
“We believe that Google can try to circumvent court treatments if they are not included,” said Dackestist. “Gen AI is the next Google Evolution to keep the evil rotation.”
The focus on artificial intelligence during listening sessions reflects the possibility of technology that a revolution in the way people abandon online to get information, just as the Google search engine did more than 20 years ago
The first witness from the government was Greg Doret, an artificial intelligence expert and professor of computer science from the University of Texas, who said that the dominant Google site in the research was an integral part of helping the company to build high -quality products.
“The artificial intelligence companies have witnessed tremendous growth in recent years and were” well. “
But in a blog post on listening sessions, the search engine from artificial intelligence supported the government to prevent billions of dollars in deals that give Google a preferred position on smartphones and computers.
“The future of the research is clear, not links to Google to sell traffic. From artificial intelligence that answers questions, completes tasks, and interacts with applications,” said Perplexity.
But Google also looks alarm devices about the proposed requirements to share online search data with competitors and the proposed sale of chrome, which is the risk of privacy and security.
“The width and depth of proposed treatments risk causing significant damage to the complex ecosystems. Some proposed treatments are exposed to browser developers and at risk of digital security to millions of consumer,” Google’s lawyers said in a file heading to the sessions.
The confrontation on the fate of Google is the peak of the largest anti -monopoly case in the United States since the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in the late 1990s to benefit from the Windows program for personal computers to crush potential competitors.
Microsoft Battle was crowned with a federal judge who announces that the company is an illegal monopoly and ordered a partial disintegration – a treatment that the Court of Appeal ultimately canceled.
Google intends to submit an appeal for the rule of Mihata last year, which described the search engine as an illegal monopoly, but it cannot do so until the listening sessions are completed. After submitting the closing arguments in late May, Mehta plans to make his decision on treatments before the Day of Workers.
The Ministry of Justice also targeted the Google Digital Network in a separate case to combat monopoly that resulted in last week in another federal judge’s decision and found that the company is offending its authority in this market as well. This ruling means that Google will go to another treatment session that can again raise the specter of separation later this year or early next year.
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The Associated Press and Openai has a license and technology agreement that allows access to Openai to part of AP.
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Liedtke mentioned from San Francisco.
