"The innovations and competition being unleashed by AI also reshaped the judge's approach to the remedies in the nearly five-year-old antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department during President Donald Trump's first administration and carried onward by President Joe Biden's administration. "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," Mehta wrote."
"The judge is trying to rein in Google by prohibiting some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services. The ruling also will pry open some of the prized databases of closely guarded information about search that have provided Google with a seemingly insurmountable advantage. The handcuffs being slapped on Google will preclude contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android and virtual assistant an exclusive position on smartphone, personal computers and other devices."
A federal judge ordered structural and contractual changes aimed at curbing illegal monopoly practices by a dominant search provider while declining to break up the company. The ruling targets exclusivity tactics and will open guarded search datasets that created a competitive advantage. The decision restricts contracts granting default or exclusive placement for search, an AI app, an app store and virtual assistants on phones and computers. The judge factored in accelerating AI-driven competition from conversational answer engines when shaping remedies. The court did not ban the multi-billion-dollar default-search payment deals that fund the company.
Read at Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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