The recent court decision in United States of America et al v. Google LLC underscores the inadequacy of relying solely on antitrust policies designed for the industrial age, especially in the dynamic artificial intelligence (AI) era. The case highlights the urgent need for Congress to define the relationship between AI and a competitive marketplace.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice, joined by a bipartisan group of 11 state attorneys general, filed a lawsuit alleging that Google search violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. After a 10-week trial, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in 2024 that Google is a monopolist and has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. The case then moved to its second stage, where the court considered remedies. The Department of Justice proposed structural solutions, including undoing defaults that make Google the search engine of choice and divesting Google-owned feeders to search, such as the Chrome browser or the Android mobile operating system. However, the court imposed behavioral requirements on Google, such as banning exclusive search deals for default placement and requiring Google to share some search results data with rivals on commercially reasonable terms.
AI Changed the Game
The emergence of generative AI significantly impacted the case. Between the lawsuit’s filing and the decision, large language models (LLMs) became broadly accessible, making online search competitive seemingly overnight. AI companies are now better positioned to compete with Google than any traditional search company developer has been in decades.
The Search Market
The arrival of AI has fragmented the online search market into three identifiable categories:
- **Traditional Search Market**: Users enter a query and receive a list of websites. As of August 2025, Google search had an 89.89% market share, while Microsoft’s Bing had 3.92%.
- **AI Search**: Queries return summarized answers drawing from top links. Services include Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, and Bing Copilot. A December 2024 study found Gemini and ChatGPT capturing 78% of all AI search traffic.
- **GenAI Search**: Conversational agent-like dialog tools include ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s Astra. A June 2025 study found that GenAI traffic was growing 165 times faster than organic search, yet it still accounted for less than 1% of total website traffic. Google search grew by over 20% in 2024, handling over 5 trillion searches—approximately 14 billion per day—a total that is 373 times bigger than ChatGPT search.
Gazing into a Crystal Ball
Judge Mehta acknowledged the challenge of predicting the future impact of AI on competition. The court’s decision walked a tightrope between Google’s past behavior and the potential impact of new technology on its future behavior. This highlights the need for clearly delineated AI competition policy that is broader and more instructive than antitrust policy.
Antitrust Enforcement is Important but Inadequate
Antitrust is a crucial tool in protecting a competitive marketplace but is inadequate in the AI era. Keeping pace with technological change and its impact on the market is not a judge’s forte. Antitrust cases are complex and lengthy, often taking years to resolve. The Google case, filed in October 2020, took almost four years to reach an initial decision and another year for the remedies ruling. Subsequent appeals could extend the process until 2027 or 2028. Such delays are an eternity in the exponential pace of digital technology, potentially making the initial complaint moot.
Antitrust law is backward-looking, designed to review past actions. The Sherman Act, which Google was found guilty of violating, makes it illegal to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade or commerce. The court rejected the government’s recommended remedies on the grounds that they overreached in seeking forced divestiture of key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.
The Need for Forward-Looking AI Competition Policy
Continued reliance on antitrust statutes means continued reliance on the mitigation of already existing harms rather than the establishment of policies that would encourage innovation through the protection and promotion of competition going forward. Competition policy should aim to promote competitive behavior ex ante, not just redress its absence ex post. This means augmenting antitrust’s backward-looking, company-specific, and behavior-specific litigation with forward-looking regulatory oversight broadly applicable to the dominant providers of services.
The 21st-century regulatory model must protect the public interest while promoting innovative advancements. This requires agile risk management, focusing on competitive market outcomes using risk-based and agile oversight of expectations, not the regulatory dictation of management practices.
Ensuring a Competitive AI Marketplace
To ensure a competitive AI marketplace, a forward-looking policy is needed to establish the expectation of open and fair access to the inputs necessary for AI innovation and diffusion. This includes data that populates LLMs and access to computing power. The Big AI companies, such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, are also the three largest cloud computing platforms.
Para que la decisión del juez Mehta altere fundamentalmente el panorama competitivo para la búsqueda, debe haber un mercado competitivo de GenAI. Esto requiere una política a largo plazo que establezca la expectativa de acceso abierto y justo a los insumos necesarios para la innovación y difusión de la inteligencia artificial. Tomar medidas hoy para establecer tal política es crucial para proteger la competencia en AI en el futuro.
Competencia en el mercado de GenAI
La competencia en el mercado de GenAI es esencial para garantizar que las empresas puedan innovar y mejorar sus productos sin restricciones. Esto incluye acceso a datos, algoritmos y otros insumos necesarios para desarrollar tecnologías de inteligencia artificial. Una política que promueva la competencia en este mercado ayudará a impulsar la innovación y la productividad en la industria.
La falta de competencia en el mercado de GenAI puede llevar a la dominación de un solo jugador, lo que puede resultar en precios altos, calidad inferior y una menor innovación. Por lo tanto, es crucial que las autoridades reguladoras actúen para establecer políticas que promuevan la competencia y garanticen que el mercado de GenAI sea abierto y justo.
