Google Says It Won’t Force Gemini on Partners in Antitrust Remedy Proposal

If Google’s generative A.I Gemini Assistant While the chatbot will overtake OpenAI’s ChatGPT in popularity in the coming years, it may have to do so without some of the promotional partnerships that have helped push Google search front and center in Americans’ lives.

In a US federal It was filed in court on FridayGoogle has proposed a series of restrictions that would force the company for three years to distribute Gemini to its device makers, browser and wireless carrier licensees to their US users. Google will give those partners more flexibility in how they set their default search provider for their users.

Google’s proposal countered a call from the US Justice Department last month not to loosen its grip on Google’s partners, but to share more data with competitors. Divest its Chrome browser business. The company on Friday formally rejected The idea of ​​selling a part of its business or giving away more information to competitors. And its proposed restrictions could be construed as narrower than those sought by the government.

The battle follows a ruling last August by US District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, DC, who found that Google violated federal antitrust laws By agreement it becomes the default search provider on iOS and other software, often in exchange for sharing ad revenue with partners. The default measures helped Google get and retain users, giving it a monopoly on both search and search advertising, Mehta found. The search giant was able to raise ad prices by accelerating “dramatic revenue growth” and “remarkably stable operating profit,” Mehta wrote in his ruling.

Now, Mehta has to decide what punishment Google will face. He has scheduled hearings from April and is expected to announce his decision by next August.

The emergence of ChatGPT, Gemini, and similar chatbots as competitors to traditional search engines has sparked court proceedings. The Justice Department and several state attorneys general involved in the case wanted to ensure that Google wouldn’t be able to shift its dominance of old-school search to this emerging field.

But even after Mehta’s impending verdict, appeals are expected to follow. Any ban on Google could take years to take effect. That has investors excited about the prospects for Google and its parent company, Alphabet. The conglomerate’s shares rose more than 37 percent in 2024, its eighth-best annual gain since going public 20 years ago.

Transfer of dominance

During this year’s trial, Google attributed its dominance in search to developing user-friendly experiences. The Justice Department argued that users stick with the defaults on their phones and browsers — often Google. The company’s proposal on Friday emphasized that Google doesn’t want to lose those defaults entirely. For example, it would allow Google to protect default search status on some Samsung phone models in the US while temporarily suspending such a requirement for all of them.

Google may still reach a deal to promote Gemini. Nothing in Google’s proposal would prevent Samsung from paying to promote Gemini on all its devices. But under the proposed restrictions, Google would not be able to require partners to promote Gemini as a condition of being able to distribute Search, Chrome or the Google Play app store. And it won’t be able to prevent partners from working with rival AI companies like OpenAI.