The antitrust lawsuit happening with Google has been dragging on for almost two years now. Many facts of the case are old news now, but here’s a quick recap for those that are new to the story:
You can view a less-abridged timeline here.
When the plaintiffs in Google’s lawsuit recommended that the company be forced to sell it’s browser and mobile operating system, the most people had the same question: Who could afford to buy it? Microsoft, while huge, would hardly solve the monopoly issue as it’s Google’s main competitor in the Search ad tech space. Meta has the funds as well, and is less of a direct competitor on the Search side. Others have thrown out Elon Musk in the past, but with the ad revenue meltdown on X and Tesla tanking in the stock market, this has become increasingly unlikely.
Enter OpenAI. While they’re the current leader in the artificial intelligence space and very well funded, they’ve yet to successfully monetize their offerings on a widespread level. Thus, I think it’s a far shot that such a deal would be approved if Google is indeed forced to sell.
Could OpenAI Buying Chrome improve market competition? I think it’s trading one set of problems on that front for another. Google owns its own proprietary AI offering, Gemini. Although it was fairly late to market, Google holds a decent market share in the AI space through this and other ventures, and is certainly OpenAI’s biggest threat in terms of sheer reach due to Gemini’s incorporation into Google Search. Allowing OpenAI to absorb Chrome, presumably replacing Gemini with ChatGPT and making their own GenAI service unavoidable, would give them an even bigger advantage in their space, making it almost impossible for other companies to keep up.
We would also be remiss if we didn’t address OpenAI’s current partnership with Bing, Google’s closest competitor. Such an acquisition would certainly be a conflict of interest, though the terms of their agreement are not completely public at this time.
Chrome claiming OpenAI wouldn’t be a good steward of users’ data privacy would certainly be the pot calling the kettle black. But I don’t mind saying it.
The truth is that ChatGPT alienates publishers just like Google does by using their data, often without providing sources or click through traffic to and from online users. Some writers and legal scholars would classify this issue under unethical copyright complaints, but just ask an author whose work has been stolen if this doesn’t feel like a personal violation in addition to a professional one.
ChatGPT doesn’t have a leg to stand on on a more granular level either. They have long been accused of using individual’s data to train their models and generate responses. See this recent article about ChatGPT replying with users’ first names unprompted, and this older article discussing general privacy concerns with the service.
While OpenAI may the funding, I still think that there are better candidates to buy Chrome. OpenAI is is a powerhouse in the artificial intelligence space, and giving them control of a browser with Chrome’s reach could end up consolidating power in a different, but equally concerning way. Between potential conflicts of interest, data privacy issues, and the risk of simply swapping one monopoly for another, the DOJ should tread carefully. If Google is forced to sell Chrome and Android, the priority shouldn’t just be who can afford it, but who should own it for the sake of fair competition and user trust.