The government is looking to break up Google’s monopoly over the internet — and OpenAI is ready to swoop in.
As Ars Technica reports, OpenAI product head Nick Turley affirmed in the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against Google that his employer would, if given the chance, purchase the search giant’s flagship internet browser, Chrome.
“Yes, we would [be interested], as would many other parties,” Turley said when asked if OpenAI would ever buy Chrome.
The DOJ proposed the potential sale of Chrome during hearings this week for the remedy phase of the agency’s case against Google, which last year was ruled to be an illegal monopoly by a federal judge.
That judge, Amit Mehta, was purportedly skeptical about the DOJ’s suggestion to sell off Chrome — but the DOJ argued, per Ars, that the browser is a key part of Google’s monopoly and would restore some competition should it no longer be under its umbrella.
OpenAI has mused in the past about creating its own web browser and even hired a few Google developers to that end. Buying Chrome would not only make the company more visible, as Turley suggested during the hearing, but also give it a staggering amount of data to train its AI models — in the form of its billions of users, whose use of the browser could be used to develop AI agents that will compete against them in the job market.
That’s not all that OpenAI has its eye on, either. Along with the proposed divestment of Chrome, the Justice Department has also suggested that Google be forced to share its search index with other companies to level the playing field — and during the trial, Turley revealed that OpenAI had attempted to get access to it already.
“We believe having multiple partners,” Turley told the search giant in emails presented as evidence, “and in particular Google’s API, would enable us to provide a better product to users.”
As Turley told the court, Google ultimately rebuffed OpenAI because it believed that such a deal would harm its leading edge in search.
As of now, it remains to be seen how the government will break up the Google monopoly — and with OpenAI’s hat in the ring, there’s a future in which ChromeGPT could plague our browsing experiences.
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