What Breaking Up Google’s Search Monopoly Could Do to AI

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Google is taken for granted as a dominant force in the generative-AI market—so it’s easy to forget that, in the initial frenzy following the release of ChatGPT, the search giant was caught flat-footed. The company raced to catch up with OpenAI, and its early models made some basic and highly publicized errors.

But now the company is at the technology’s vanguard. Its flagship Gemini AI models are being integrated into seven different Google-owned products with at least 2 billion users each. That’s not because Gemini is so much better than ChatGPT, Claude, or any other competitor—but because Google already had that sprawling ecosystem and user base.

That ecosystem advantage, perhaps more so than the talent of their research teams, is what makes Google, Apple, Meta, and other corporate behemoths formidable in the AI wars. Their AI-powered assistants seamlessly integrate across their personal and enterprise software, gadgets, and social-media platforms. And “this is why a recent proposal from the Department of Justice is so significant,” I wrote on Tuesday. “The government wants to break up Google’s monopoly over the search market, but its proposed remedies may in fact do more to shape the future of AI.” Making it harder for Google to give its own products preferential treatment might not actually drive people away from the company’s search engine—but it could make them second-guess Gemini. The DOJ’s requests might be under the auspices of search, I wrote, but they “are really shots at Google’s expansive empire.”

The AI War Was Never Just About AI

By Matteo Wong

For almost two years now, the world’s biggest tech companies have been at war over generative AI. Meta may be known for social media, Google for search, and Amazon for online shopping, but since the release of ChatGPT, each has made tremendous investments in an attempt to dominate in this new era. Along with start-ups such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, their spending on data centers and chatbots is on track to eclipse the costs of sending the first astronauts to the moon.

To be successful, these companies will have to do more than build the most “intelligent” software: They will need people to use, and return to, their products. Everyone wants to be Facebook, and nobody wants to be Friendster. To that end, the best strategy in tech hasn’t changed: build an ecosystem that users can’t help but live in. Billions of people use Google Search every day, so Google built a generative-AI product known as “AI Overviews” right into the results page, granting it an immediate advantage over competitors.

Read the full article.

What to Read Next

• The case against spinning off Chrome: “People who like and are familiar with Google might just choose it again,” Ian Bogost wrote about the DOJ decision.
• The iPhone is now an AI Trojan Horse: “Adding up iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Macs, and AirPods, billions of the company’s devices are used by people all over the world, perfect delivery vehicles for AI,” Charlie Warzel and I wrote in June.

P.S.

Donald Trump is considering naming an “AI czar,” according to Axios, and Elon Musk will be heavily involved in the selection. Musk has long-standing feuds with executives at other leading AI companies, including Sam Altman, and earlier this year my colleague Ross Andersen wrote an astute summary of the feud: “Musk, who cannot seem to stand the idea that there might be tech drama somewhere that does not involve him, has been trolling OpenAI relentlessly on X.”

— Matteo