Washington, D.C. — In advance of the highly-anticipated U.S. v Google antitrust trial against Google’s monopoly power over search, the American Economic Liberties Project today released a new policy brief, Google Search Trial: A New Era Beckons to shed light on how the results of the trial will affect the market for commercial artificial intelligence technologies.

“The coming antitrust trial over Google’s monopoly in search is really a trial over the future of artificial intelligence,” said Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. “The main way that AI is deployed today is in combing the internet for answers, so if Google gets to maintain its monopoly, Google will control the future of AI. If Judge Amit Mehta rules against Google’s monopoly, then the future will belong to all of us.”

Tomorrow, Google, one of the largest companies in the world, which has roughly 90% share in search and nine products with more than a billion users, will be put on trial by the United States government for monopolization of the internet search market. This case, which was filed in 2020 under the Trump administration, is the first major monopolization claim pursued by the Department of Justice against a tech firm in 25 years, and among the most important antitrust cases in a generation. As the new Economic Liberties brief explains, the trial has taken on additional significance because its timing matches a technological inflection point: the deployment of generative artificial intelligence tools on a mass commercial scale.

As the New Yorker describes in its coverage of the new policy brief, “if the judge in the [Google search] case leaves Google intact, the company’s continued dominance of the online-search market could stymie companies creating new search products that integrate novel A.I. technologies as these potential competitors conclude that it’s too difficult to try to break into the search market.”

The policy brief walks through how Google came to dominate Search, the history of Google competitors like Neeva, along with how the Department of Justice’s case against Google’s search monopoly could impact the future of AI. As with technologies of the past, artificial intelligence has the potential to be transformative, but the terms of its commercialization will depend on the legal frameworks underpinning market structure. If firms can compete on a level playing field for customers, small rivals can create innovative products and take market share. If not, then such a technological inflection point will only entrench the incumbent’s dominance. Courts and policymakers have long recognized that antitrust enforcement is vitally necessary in such moments.

Read “The Google Search Trial: A New Era Beckons.”

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.