The ruling in the Department of Justice’s landmark antitrust case against Google-parent Alphabet, stopped short of what could have been the government’s most severe action in decades to curb the power of a monopoly—and acknowledged the potentially massive impact that artificial intelligence technology could have on the search market.
“Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture” of Google’s Chrome web browser and of the Android operating system, “which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints,” wrote Judge Amit Mehta in a 250-page ruling on Tuesday. But, he said, the emergence of generative AI has “changed the course of this case.”
“Unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte,” wrote Mehta.
