A recent antitrust ruling in the US is opening up a rare opportunity for AI companies to challenge Google's dominance in online search.
According to the decision of a Judge of the US Federal Court of Columbia Amit Mehta District, Google of Alphabet Group was forced to share valuable search data with competitors.
This is considered a step to create a fair playground for AI businesses that have been investing billions of USD in this field.
The ruling comes as the wave of AI chatbot such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude is being exploited by tens of millions of users to partly replace traditional search methods.
Mehta said that the rise of GenAI has changed the scope of lawsuits, and emphasized that developers will continue to add features to make AI products more and more similar to Google Search.
However, experts say that challenging Google is not simple.
The tech giant has not only kept Chrome and Android, but has also maintained a payment strategy to become the default search engine on many devices.
More importantly, Google has the ability to index, analyze, and store billions of websites to provide fast and accurate search results. This is something that opponents will find it difficult to repeat in a short time.
Deepak Mathivanan, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, commented: Refendants have to make a lot of effort to achieve the ability to provide content and index like Google. Consumers also need more time to accept new experiences.
According to Ben Bajarin, CEO of Creative Strategies, even with access to Google's data, the cost of building a competitive system is still extremely expensive. Currently, ChatGPT is surpassing Google's Gemini in terms of number of users, but Google is quickly adding new features to retain users.
However, the need to share data can help competitors reduce development barriers, opening up potential alternatives.
Meanwhile, Alphabet investors can temporarily rest assured that the overthrow of Google in the search market will not happen in the near future.
