Google's Competitive AI Company Can Be Blessings From Data Sharing Orders, But Google Hasn't Been Eliminated

Illustration of Google Chrome (photo: Doc. pexels)

JAKARTA - A group of on the rise artificial intelligence (AI) companies benefited from the court's antitrust ruling in the US on Tuesday, September 2 ordering Alphabet, Google's parent company, to share its valuable search data with competitors. However, comparable Google's dominance will take great time and resources, without guaranteeing that rival products will win the hearts of users, according to experts.

While Google has avoided severe penalties such as sales of Chrome browsers and Android operating systems, US District Judge Amit Mehta's decision, it acknowledges regulatory efforts to create fairer competition for companies that have invested billions of dollars to grow their AI business.

In its ruling, Mehta wrote, "The emergence of a generative AI is changing the direction of this case." He explained that tens of millions of people now use a generating AI chatbot such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude to find the information they previously obtained through internet searches. Although this chatbot has not been fully able to replace traditional searches, the industry estimates that developers will continue to add features to generative AI products to better resemble Google Search's functions.

The obligation to share data does not change the way Google is currently distributed, which allows the company to continue paying companies like Apple to make its search engine an option default. However, this lowers barriers for competitors to develop and distribute their own alternative search, experts say.

AI Threats And Large Capital Needs

Some say that this AI product poses a greater threat to Google than the antitrust case itself. However, the development of the product requires enormous time and resources, trusting Alphabet investors in the short term.

Current AI and browser search engines have not been able to erode Google's market share significantly. Although OpenAI's ChatGPT has surpassed Google's Gemini in terms of user numbers, Google has fought back with features like AI Overviews and AI Mode to keep users in its search engine.

"Building a competitive user experience based on the data and indices provided by Google requires great effort,"AThivanan, an analyst from Cantorgan. "And it takes longer for consumers to accept this new experience."

Index is Google's way of finding, analyzing, and storing website pages in its database to provide relevant search results, as well as expanding the reach of websites through re-publicing content. Even with access to Google data, building products that can attract users from Google will be "very expensive," said Ben Bajarin, CEO of technology consulting firm Creative Strategies.

However, a number of large fund-supported AI startups have disbursed significant venture investments for this purpose. OpenAI offers search products in ChatGPT and, according to a Reuters report in July, has almost released a web browser to challenge Chrome. The Perplexity startup, backed by Nvidia, has launched its AI-powered search and browser, and is now negotiating to install its browser on the devices of several mobile manufacturers.

Google Concerns And Competitor Opportunities

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai expressed concern during the trial in April that the US Department of Justice's requested data sharing move could allow competitors to reverse-engineer Google's technology. With insights into Google's intellectual property dominating the market, tech giants with large funds could again try to seize the search market.

Microsoft may push for an increase in Bing's market share, and Apple, which is thought to be lagging behind AI after failing to fulfill promises to increase AI for products like Siri, could try to enter the search market, Mathivanan said.

Judge Mehta stated in his ruling that it allowed Google to continue paying other companies to promote its search engine "more acceptable now" because "big tech companies are developing, and startups are accepting hundreds of billions of dollars in capital to develop generative AI products that threaten the dominance of traditional internet searches."