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Google is using its AI products to further expand its dominance in the online search market, the Justice Department argued Monday.
Why it matters: The federal government is making its case to break up Google and reshape the internet.
Driving the news: Google and the Justice Department on Monday kicked off the remedies phase of their federal antitrust trial, following Google's loss in D.C. District Court.
- Google had argued in an earlier phase of the trial that the advent of generative AI made the DOJ's case against the company out of date, and that new generative AI products would give Google even more competitors.
- The DOJ said Monday that its case has grown stronger in the past few months, pointing out that Google is paying Samsung "an enormous sum of money" for Gemini to be the default AI assistant on Samsung devices.
Context: The court already found Google's exclusionary contracts to be the default search engine on certain devices and browsers to be illegal.
What they're saying: "This is the monopolist playbook at work. Google is using the same strategy that they did for search and now applying it to Gemini," DOJ attorney David Dahlquist said.
- The DOJ wants remedies to be "forward-looking" and include AI, Dahlquist said.
- "This is why these products must be included as part of the remedy. Increasing queries increases ad dollars and increases revenue to Google."
- "Google wants to expressly carve out their GenAI products so that they can repeat the monopoly playbook on those products going forward. The risk of excluding GenAI, as well as Gemini [from remedies], is too great."
The other side: Google argued ahead of Monday's trial in a blog post that the DOJ's proposed remedies would hurt national security and disrupt the global AI race.
- In court, Google attorney John Schmidtlein said the DOJ's remedy list is a "wish list for competitors to gain benefits with competition."
- The generative AI market is "performing extraordinarily competitively," Schmidtlein said, name-checking OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft Copilot and X's Grok.
What's next: Google executives and witnesses from other tech companies will soon take the stand, with closing arguments set for May 30 and a decision expected by August.
