Google announced a new AI model called Gemini 2.0 in the face of antitrust challenges that include potential asset divestitures and data-sharing mandates amid regulatory scrutiny of its business practices.
Google is aggressively pushing forward its AI technologies at a time when it is facing grave antitrust challenges. It recently released Gemini 2.0, an AI model that is intended to read images, complete tasks, and make users’ interaction with the platform more rewarding. This positions Google as a peer with OpenAI and Microsoft on AI products.
Meanwhile, pressure builds on Google from regulators. In August 2024, a US District Court ruled that Google’s business in search engines was an abuse of its monopoly power since it had entered into contracts exclusively with others and was thus violating antitrust laws. The potential remedies could be to prevent such contracts and perhaps force the firm to divest assets like the Chrome browser or Android OS.
This is, therefore, highly complex and revolves on the assessment of Google holding and basing the trainings on the user data it enjoys. Here, the regulators seem to pick up the interest in how the dominant position in search prevents Google from leveraging to advantage itself as regards AI, like enforcing the requirement for its competitors to share data amongst themselves or allowing websites an option out to decline providing data for the trainings that Google develops.
Despite all this, Google still includes AI in its services to try and provide better user experiences and competitive advantage. This most probably will affect the future of the company in its efforts to find the right balance between innovation and compliance with changing technologies.
