Google and the United States Justice Department are back in court to fight over the remedies that will be implemented to address Google’s search monopoly, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai today took the stand to defend Google.
The DoJ wants Google to divest its Chrome browser, refrain from making search engine agreements like the one Google has with Apple, and share “critical portions” of its search data with competitors at a “marginal cost,” including how it ranks search results and query understanding information. According to Pichai, these remedies would essentially mean the end of Google search.
As outlined by The New York Times, Pichai said that if Google had to share data, the company wouldn’t likely continue to invest in search. “The combination of all the remedies, I think, makes it unviable to invest in R&D the way we have for the past three decades, to continue to innovate and build Google search,” he said. He suggested that Google would not be able to fund “all the innovation” that the company puts into search.
Pichai said that the data sharing requirement would be a “de facto divestiture” of Google’s intellectual property. With that information, Pichai claimed that any company could “completely reverse engineer, end to end, every aspect of [Google’s] technology stack.” He said that the DoJ’s proposal that Google share its data is “extraordinary” and “far reaching.”
Google wants to be able to continue to make search engine deals like the one it has with Apple, according to Pichai, though he suggested those deals could be renegotiated on an annual basis and that those deals would not be exclusive. Google’s upcoming deal to add Gemini to the iPhone along with OpenAI was cited as an example of Google’s new deal making policy.
Judge Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the case, will consider testimony from both Google and the DoJ before he provides remedies. A decision is expected by August, and Google will undoubtedly appeal, so the case is likely to take many more years to play out.
