OpenAI Could Buy Chrome If Google Is Forced to Sell—What’s Next?
Google had exclusive deals with Samsung and other phone makers to make its search engine set as the default, which might also change.
During the ongoing antitrust trial against Google in Washington, OpenAI said it would consider buying Chrome if it were ever on sale.
Nick Turley, the head of product at ChatGPT, revealed this during his testimony on Tuesday. This came up as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) continued to argue that Google should be forced to make big changes to bring back fair competition in online search. A judge already ruled last year that Google holds a monopoly in the search and search advertising market.
Prosecutors are now saying that Google’s dominance could give it an upper hand in artificial intelligence, too. They believe Google's AI tools might be another route to direct users to its search engine. However, Google argues this case isn’t about AI and says it has strong competitors like Meta and Microsoft.
No More The Default Search Engine
Previously, Google had exclusive deals with Samsung and other phone makers to make its search engine set as the default. However, they are now relaxing things. There are newer deals that allow other search engines and AI tools to be preloaded as well.
According to Google, these changes will be enough, but the DOJ demands stricter rules. It’s pushing to restrict Google from paying companies to make Google the default search engine on the devices people use every day.
Interestingly, OpenAI had attempted to team up with Google last year to improve their answers by taking the help of Google’s search data. But Google declined. For now, ChatGPT relies on using Microsoft’s Bing for search results.
Turley also said that if Google were forced to divulge data on its search results, it would literally do ChatGPT a world of good in helping the AI better answer search questions with facts and in real time. He admitted ChatGPT still had a long way to go in handling most of the search queries on its own.
