What happened: A top Justice Department attorney claims ChatGPT and other tech could have been launched years ago if Google didn't have a monopoly in the search market. Details: Kenneth Dintzer, the DOJ's lead lawyer in its antitrust case against Google, told a federal court that Google's dominance has stifled AI innovation. He brought up the example of Google releasing its own Bard chatbot days after Microsoft introduced its OpenAI chat technology into the Bing search engine. Quotable: "What has been going on for the past 12 years is Google has been maintaining its monopoly," Dintzer told the court. "Would we have seen ChatGPT six years earlier?" By the numbers: Google claimed over 93% of the worldwide search engine market as of last month. Google's dominance is shored up by the exclusivity deals that allow its search engine to come preloaded on phones and browsers, such as Apple's Safari. What's next: A judge's rulings on this and another antitrust case are expected this summer. |
