A US court ruled in August that Google has a search monopoly, and while Google appeals, the Justice Department is figuring out what kind of potential penalties to impose, such as breaking Chrome.
As part of this process, the Justice Department wants to call a specific witness, according to a recent court filing: Dmitry Shevelenko, chief commercial officer of Perplexity, an artificial intelligence search provider recently valued at $9 billion. by Reuters.
Perplexity and other generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search have emerged as a potential replacement for Internet search, as they can offer direct answers to complicated queries (albeit sometimes with made-up or inaccurate information). Google has responded to the threat with its own AI search tools, such as AI Overviews, which provides AI-generated answers on top of search results.
The Justice Department wants to ask Shevelenko about “generative AI’s relationship to search hotspots, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing.”
“Search hotspots” is a term the Justice Department uses to describe things like Google Chrome: places where people search the Internet.
While the filing doesn’t explain exactly why the Justice Department wants to question Perplexity about these issues, it could help its argument that Google monopolizes the search business and forecloses potential competitors, thus deserving harsher penalties.
britcommerce asked Perplexity if it had agreed to let its executive testify and what it thought about the antitrust case. Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did Google.
The puzzlement is effectively caught in the middle of the dispute, as both sides want information that can help their cases. Google subpoenaed Perplexity in October to produce company documents to make its own case that it has viable competition in the search field. (Google also cited Microsoft and OpenAI.)
However, Perplexity has yet to provide “a single document” to Google as of December 11, the tech giant lamented in a court filing, stating there is “no conceivable justification for further delay” after two months of waiting. .
For its part, Perplexity says in the filing that it has already agreed to comply with 12 of Google’s 14 document requests, but is “still evaluating the burden associated with collecting such a potentially expansive universe of documents.”
Perplexity also says that while it has agreed to provide copies of licensing agreements “related to AI training,” Google wants all of Perplexity’s licensing agreements and that it has asked Google to “meet and discuss” this.