Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai testified Wednesday in Google’s antitrust case that he has “a lot of concerns around privacy” if the company is forced to sell some of the data it collects to create its search results.
Google and the Department of Justice are in the midst of a three-week court battle in Washington, DC, that could result in a massive shake-up of the $1.8 trillion tech giant.
US District Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled in August that Google’s online search business violated US antitrust law, will ultimately determine Google’s fate.
One of the remedies the Justice Department is seeking would require Google to sell its Chrome browser and share some of the data.
Asked about how the government’s proposed remedy would affect Google’s business, Pichai warned about the impact it could have on people’s search data.
“People search in Google in their most vulnerable moments, and there seems to be no privacy protections,” he said, calling the proposal on data sharing “so far-reaching, so extraordinary.”
“All of the years of R and D and all the years we have put into the product, it feels like a full divestiture,” he said.
Pichai also expressed concerns about how a potential future competitor would secure users’ info, stressing that no one has done more than Google to safeguard its user data over the years.
Veronica Onyemar, an attorney for the Justice Department, noted that Google was accused in 2011 of violating consumers’ privacy when it launched its social network. Google and the government settled that case.
“I haven’t seen any other company come close to making the type of investments that we do,” Pichai said.
Onyemar poked at Pichai’s concern about the government’s request by pointing to Google’s compliance with Europe’s Digital Markets Act. Under the sweeping tech law, Google is required to share some search data with smaller competitors.
In response, Pichai said Europe’s requirements are “very different from how it is in the plaintiffs’ proposal.”
The DOJ brought up the Digital Markets Act, which the Trump White House has taken issue with, to undermine Pichai’s claim that Google would reconsider its robust investment in research and development if the company is forced to give up closely guarded data.
Pichai responded that the DMA’s complex requirements have forced European users to wait for the latest developments.
“In Europe today, there are many features that we launch a year later than we launch in the US,” he said.
Earlier, Pichai was asked about the threat of AI chatbots to Google’s search engine. The Justice Department has argued that the company could use its AI products to bolster its dominance in search by using the reams of search-engine data it has collected over the years.
Pichai stressed that Google’s dominance is by no means assured. He said the generative AI field is wide open, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT leading the race and more entrants than he could keep track of.
“In terms of the consumer Gemini app, we’ve made a lot of progress. It is a popular app,” he said. “I am pleased with the progress, but we have a big gap between us and the market leader in the space.”
