The technology giant Google is being hit by the latest lawsuit from the United States (US) Government regarding allegations of an advertising monopoly and the presence of ChatGPT. Could this be the end of the story of the domination of the company led by Sundar Pichai?
The US Department of Justice claims that for more than 15 years Google has run an illegal monopoly in the online advertising business. This case comes several years after the Trump regime filed a similar lawsuit.
Google said the Justice Department "doubled down on flawed arguments" and the latest lawsuit "seeks to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector."
Quoted from CNN, Google will become the most powerful advertising company in the world if it wins the battle at the green table. However, the process of completing the trial could take years.
Beyond that, two other thorny issues could determine Google's future in a shorter timeframe; the latest emergence of artificial intelligence that could degrade Google's advertising market.
A few weeks ago Google announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs amid a dramatic drop in revenue growth. Now the company is refocusing its efforts in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
Even though Google's search engine currently dominates the virtual world, observers see a tough competitor that may threaten the company's dominance.
At the end of 2022, OpenAI, a research company in the field of artificial intelligence, released a viral chatbot called ChatGPT.
ChatGPT users show off the bot's ability to compose poetry, compile legal documents to explain complex ideas with just simple commands.
The service can produce long answers when asked a question even though it still contains some errors. Meanwhile, searching for answers via Google only produces answers with various site references.
ChatGPT is trained over large databases to generate responses to user requests. Through this platform, the potential of technology can be directly understood by millions of people.
This prompted Google's management to declare a red code situation for its search engine business.
"Google may only be a year or two away from a total breakdown. AI will eliminate Search Engine Results Pages, where they make most of their money," said Paul Buchheit, co-creator of Gmail.
If more users start relying on AI for their information needs, it could undermine Google advertising, which is part of the company's US$149 billion business segment.
Even though Google can be 'crazy', the technology company cannot be considered as a strict competitor. In terms of total users, Google in November reported receiving 86 billion visits.
The numbers are a clear contrast when compared to visitors to the ChatGPT platform which only generated less than 300 million visitors in November, according to a SimilarWeb report.
Google has its own investment in advanced artificial intelligence. One of the AI-driven chat programs, LaMDA, has even become a bright spot for companies in running AI-based technology products.
Quoted from CNBC, Sundar Pichai reportedly told employees that Google had capabilities similar to ChatGPT. However, the company has not yet committed to providing AI-generated search due to the risk of providing inaccurate information.
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