Latest news with #AmitPMehta
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
The judge's data dilemma in the Google search case
Data played a starring role in the government's successful antitrust suit against accusing it of illegally protecting its monopoly in online search. Now, steps to force Google to unlock its data trove could figure prominently in a ruling on how to address the tech giant's dominance, antitrust experts say. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now On Friday, the federal judge overseeing the case, Amit P Mehta, heard closing arguments in federal court in Washington on what corrective measures, known as remedies, he should order to restore competition. The government's requests include forcing Google to share its search engine results and advertising data with rivals. Justice Department lawyers have repeatedly described data as "the oxygen" for search engines. And in his ruling against Google in August, Mehta recounted in detail how the company harvests vast amounts of data from user searches and web crawling, then stores and analyzes the data to rule the lucrative market for internet search. Google, he noted, collects nine times as much user search data every day as all its rivals combined. And as more data is fed into Google's software, the results that the search engine returns on everything from biology to bluejeans become more accurate and relevant to the person seeking information. Better search performance, in turn, attracts more users and more advertisers, Mehta wrote. It's a flywheel that steadily enhances Google's search and acts as a barrier to competition. "At every stage in the search process," the judge wrote, "user data is a critical input that directly improves quality." His decision on how to fix Google's monopoly has the potential to reshape competition on the internet, particularly as a new age of generative artificial intelligence takes off and is expected to overhaul the way people search for information online. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Tech companies are racing to win consumers over with chatbots and other tools that can answer more sophisticated questions, drawing from vast pools of data. Mehta has already indicated that AI may factor into his deliberations, noting during a recent hearing the rapid development of the technology since the lawsuit went to trial in the fall of 2023. To fix Google's search monopoly, the Justice Department and the group of states that brought the case have recommended a range of sanctions, from simply prohibiting anticompetitive deals with companies that Google pays to make it the automatic search engine to forcing the company to sell off its market-leading Chrome browser. The government's data-related proposal falls somewhere in between. It includes requiring Google to share user search information and license its search index, a database of hundreds of billions of webpages scored by popularity, quality and relevance. In late April, Mehta said he looked at his job as weighing actions across a "remedy spectrum." At one end was a breakup order, he said, while at the minimalist end was a ban on illegal deals with browser and smartphone companies. In the middle were "forward-looking remedies," he said, without elaborating on his thinking. Given the evidence in the case, a data-sharing order would be "a conceptually appropriate remedy," since the exclusive deals increased Google's data advantage, said Douglas Melamed, a former senior official in the Justice Department's antitrust division and now a visiting fellow at the Stanford Law School. Still, a data-sharing project raises its own set of questions. In court testimony, Google emphasized the privacy concerns of passing user search data along to other companies. The government's data proposal also calls for access to software that uses data as an ingredient but was built by Google's engineers. "It looks like an administrative headache -- how much data, how often, and access to Google's crown jewel?" said John Yun, an economist at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Google has described the government's data-sharing plan as the equivalent of a breakup -- a forced surrender of its intellectual property, allowing competitors to reverse-engineer its technology. "The proposal on data sharing is so far-reaching, so extraordinary," that it "feels like de facto divestiture of search," , CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company, testified in court last month. The history of forced asset sharing as a solution for monopolistic behavior is mixed. In 1956, as part of an antitrust settlement with the government, AT&T agreed to license its patents, including for transistors, the tiny switches that are the building blocks of electronic circuitry. That opened the door to an independent semiconductor industry in what became Silicon Valley. But the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was intended to increase competition for local telephone service by mandating that companies share network capacity, didn't result in much innovation. Eventually, genuine competition emerged, but it came from mobile wireless and cable broadband companies, said Jon Nuechterlein, a telecom expert and former general counsel of the Federal Trade Commission. Landline voice service has fallen from nearly 100% of households in 1996 to about 25% today. "Outside competition emerged independent of all the regulatory churn," said Nuechterlein, a distinguished scholar at George Washington University's Competition Law Center. Today, AI is the big unknown in search. Chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, the AI-powered search engine Perplexity, and others are potential Google disrupters. Google itself is investing heavily in AI-enhanced search, which Pichai recently described as "a total reimagining of search." While Mehta has more recently acknowledged the rapid advance of AI, his ruling in August noted that the technology had yet to overtake traditional search. "AI has not supplanted the traditional ingredients that define general search," he wrote. "Importantly, generative AI has not (or, at least, not yet) eliminated or materially reduced the need for user data to deliver quality search results." Some antitrust experts say Mehta's decision could affect search and AI. "The explosion of AI makes it even more important to have strong data-sharing remedies," said Gene Kimmelman, a former senior official in the Justice Department's antitrust division. "AI and search overlap, and both ride on data."
Time of India
09-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
US vs Google: What both sides argued in a hearing to fix its search monopoly
For the past three weeks, the Justice Department and Google have questioned more than two dozen witnesses to try to sway a federal judge's decision over how to address the company's illegal monopoly in internet search. #Operation Sindoor India-Pakistan Clash Live Updates| Missiles, shelling, and attacks — here's all that's happening Pakistani Air Force jet shot down in Pathankot by Indian Air Defence: Sources India on high alert: What's shut, who's on leave, and state-wise emergency measures On Friday, that hearing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to conclude. To fix the monopoly, the government has proposed aggressive measures that include forcing Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser and share proprietary data with competitors. Google has argued that small tweaks to its business practices would be more appropriate. Both sides will offer closing arguments at the end of the month. Judge Amit P Mehta, who is presiding over the case, is expected to reach a decision by August. His ruling could have significant implications for Google, its rivals and the way that people look for information online. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Here's what to know about what was argued at the hearing. What case does the hearing stem from? Live Events In August, Mehta ruled that Google had broken antitrust law when it paid companies like Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars to automatically appear as the search engine in browsers and on smartphones. He also ruled that Google's monopoly allowed it to inflate the prices for some search ads, adding to its unfair advantage. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Mehta convened the hearing last month to determine how to best address the search monopoly through measures called remedies. Executives from Google, rival search engines and artificial intelligence companies -- alongside experts -- testified about Google's power over the internet. What did the government argue? The only way to end Google's dominance in search is by taking significant action, government lawyers said at the hearing. Lawyers argued that Google should be forced to spin off Chrome and share search results and ads with rivals, allowing them to populate their own search engines. Other search engines and some AI companies should get access to data on what Google users search for, as well as the websites they click on. The government warned during the hearing that if Mehta didn't take action, it could propel Google into dominance of another technology, AI. Search is in upheaval as AI and chatbots, like Google's Gemini, change the way people find information on the web. "This court's remedy should be forward looking and not ignore what's on the horizon," said David Dahlquist, the government's lead litigator. "Google is using the same strategy that they did for search and now applying it to Gemini." Eddy Cue, an Apple executive called as a witness by Google, said that "in the past two months for the first time in over 20 years," Google search queries had declined in the company's Safari browser for the first time. He attributed the drop to the growth of AI. What did Google argue? Google's lawyers said the government's proposal would endanger products that consumers love and imperil privacy and security for internet browsing. "I think it definitely will have many unintended consequences," testified Sundar Pichai , Google's CEO. Sharing Google's data with its competitors would undermine the privacy of its users, the company's lawyers said. They pointed multiple times to a 2006 incident in which AOL released search data to aid academic researchers. Journalists were able to use leaked data to identify an individual based on her searches. There's also plenty of competition in AI, they said, noting the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other examples. Google's lawyers instead proposed that its contracts with web browsers and smartphone companies should offer more freedom to work with competing search and AI services. Pichai testified that Google had already started altering its contracts with other companies to align with its proposal in the case. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft , for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. They have denied wrongdoing.) What did other companies say? During the hearing, several Google competitors, including OpenAI and the chatbot company Perplexity, said they would be open to buying Chrome if it was put up for sale. Government witnesses said access to Google's search and ad data would give AI companies an advantage as they tried to compete with Google. What did the judge say? When Mehta questioned witnesses throughout the hearing, he provided a window into his thinking. At times, he pushed witnesses to say whether any rivals could compete with Google's search dominance absent the court's intervention. Many of his questions revolved around AI and its significance, as Google battles its rivals to develop the technology that has become a major force in the tech industry. When Pichai was on the witness stand, Mehta said he had observed the rapid development of AI since the lawsuit went to trial in the fall of 2023, signaling he was aware of how the growth of the technology had become the backdrop for the hearing. "One of the things that has struck me, Mr Pichai, about these proceedings is, when we were together not so long ago, the consistent testimony from the witnesses was that the integration of AI and search or the impact of AI on search was years away," he said, referring to testimony during the 2023 trial. "By the time we've gotten here today, things have changed dramatically."
India Today
22-04-2025
- Business
- India Today
The US wants to break up Google: Everything about the monopoly trial in 5 points
A historic legal showdown is unfolding in Washington, where the US government is pushing for the most drastic change ever to one of the world's most powerful tech companies: Google. At the heart of the case is the accusation that Google abused its dominance in internet search -- and now, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) says breaking the company up may be the only way to restore fair competition online. Here's everything you need to know, in 5 key is Google on trial?Last year, Judge Amit P Mehta ruled that Google had broken antitrust laws to protect its dominance in internet search. The court found that Google used its market power unfairly -- such as by paying billions to companies like Apple and Samsung to make Google the default search engine on phones and web browsers. These deals helped Google stay at the top, not just because of its product quality, but because of the way it shut out rivals from gaining a foothold. The judge called Google a 'monopolist,' and the current trial is focused on what to do about it. The government says Google's behaviour has created a closed loop where it keeps growing stronger simply by being the default option, collecting more user data, and improving its results -- which in turn brings in more money, allowing it to secure even more default does the US government want to do?The Justice Department is asking for bold and sweeping remedies to break this cycle. The most headline-grabbing proposal is for Google to sell off its Chrome web browser, which it says is a 'gateway to search' and responsible for 35 per cent of all user queries. Chrome has more than 4 billion users globally, and forcing Google to divest it could drastically change how people access the government also wants to ban Google from making default search engine deals, such as the $20 billion it reportedly pays Apple each year. These agreements are seen as a major barrier preventing rival search engines from competing proposal is for Google to share its vast trove of search data -- including its search index and results -- with competitors. This would allow other companies to build better search products, but Google says it would be like giving away the company's crown jewels. Its lawyers argue that such a move is dangerous and could expose users' private is Google's defence?Google strongly disagrees with the government's claims and says the proposed remedies are 'extreme' and 'fundamentally flawed.' The company argues it earned its place through hard work, innovation, and smart business decisions — such as investing early in mobile search. It believes that punishing it for success would set a dangerous legal team claims that banning default deals and forcing data sharing would actually hurt competition. They say rivals would simply copy Google's work without having made the same investments, and that such measures could discourage future innovation. Google also insists that Chrome is not a standalone business and only makes sense as part of its broader could change for users?If the judge agrees with the government's proposals, the way people use the internet could look very different in a few years. Without default deals, users might be asked to choose a search engine when setting up their device — rather than being automatically directed to Chrome is sold off, it may become a separate company or be acquired by another tech giant, possibly altering how the browser functions or how tightly it integrates with Google Search. This could open up more space for alternative browsers and search engines to most significantly, if rivals gain access to Google's data, we could see a surge in new search engines, chatbots, or AI tools built using that information. This could spur more innovation — or, as Google fears, lead to copycat products with fewer safety at stake beyond search?This case is about more than just search engines. It's about how the internet works — and who controls it. Google's dominance in search has helped it grow into a $1.8 trillion company with deep influence across ads, mobile software (Android), online video (YouTube), and now parts of Google's business have already been found to be monopolies. A judge recently ruled its ad tech tools are illegal monopolies, and in 2023, a jury found its app store also violated antitrust laws. The current trial is a chance for regulators to draw a line — not just for Google, but for other tech giants watching is also part of the conversation. The Justice Department has warned that Google is applying its old playbook to its new AI tools, like Gemini. If left unchecked, regulators argue, Google could dominate the AI market just as it did with counters that the AI field is highly competitive, pointing to the rise of OpenAI and its viral product ChatGPT. It argues that the market is already evolving, and that heavy-handed regulation could slow next?Judge Mehta is expected to make a decision on remedies by late summer. Whatever the outcome, this case could shape the future of technology — not just in the US, but around the world. Will Google be broken up? Will it be forced to change how it does business? Or will the court decide that its dominance is simply the result of playing fair and winning?For now, the battle lines are drawn. The world is In
