Google's Monopoly Case Takes A Turn As Judge Considers Lighter Remedies Amid Rising Competition From AI Rivals Like OpenAI And Perplexity

On Friday, a federal judge signaled he may scale back the Justice Department's proposed remedies for Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google's alleged search monopoly, citing the fast-changing role of artificial intelligence in online search.

What Happened: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, presiding over the high-profile antitrust case, expressed skepticism about imposing a 10-year oversight plan that would force Google to share search data and stop paying Apple Inc. AAPL and others to be the default search engine, reported Reuters.

"Ten years may seem like a short period, but in this space, a lot can change in weeks," Mehta said, referring to ChatGPT-maker OpenAI's decision to buy Jony Ive's startup to build AI devices.

He added that future competition may not come from traditional search rivals like Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT Bing or DuckDuckGo, but from AI companies offering fundamentally different user experiences.

"If anything, it's going to be one of these AI companies that can do more than just search. And Why? Because maybe people don't want 10 blue links anymore," Mehta said.

Google's lawyer John Schmidtlein pushed back on the idea of giving AI rivals access to Google's proprietary data, arguing, "Coming to Google and asking Google for a handout when they are the market leader seems completely disproportionate to what this case is about."

Previously, Nick Turley, OpenAI’s product head for ChatGPT, testified that the AI startup would be open to acquiring Chrome if Google were ever compelled to sell it.

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Why It's Important: Earlier this month, Apple executive Eddy Cue testified that Safari had seen a drop in search volumes for the first time in over 20 years, attributing the decline to the growing use of AI-powered searches.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pushed back on this in an interview with The Verge published this week, asserting that the data does not indicate a decline in overall activity. “We’ve been very clear. We’re seeing overall query growth in search,” he said.

During his testimony, Cue also revealed that Apple is actively considering integrating an AI-driven search engine into Safari, evaluating potential partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity AI.

Meanwhile, Google introduced a new “AI mode” in its Search and Chrome browser during its developer conference. Now available to all U.S. users, the feature offers a conversational, Q&A-style interface similar to ChatGPT, replacing the traditional list of search result links.

Price Action: Alphabet Inc.’s Class A shares dipped 0.32% in after-hours trading, with Class C shares also down 0.32%, based on Benzinga Pro data.

According to Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings, Alphabet holds a growth score of 88.54%. Click here to compare it with other companies like Apple.