By Jody Godoy
(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice’s proposals to increase competition against Alphabet’s Google in online search could chill artificial intelligence investments, AI startup and Google partner Anthropic said on Friday.
Requiring Google to give the DOJ advance notice of its proposed AI investments and partnerships would create a “significant disincentive” for Google to invest in smaller AI companies and likely deter such investments altogether, Anthropic said in court papers filed in Washington.
Google holds a minority stake worth billions of dollars in Anthropic.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is considering ways for Google to open up the online search market, after ruling in August that the tech titan holds an illegal monopoly.
The DOJ and state attorneys general have expressed concerns that Google could extend its dominance to AI.
Anthropic argued that the DOJ’s proposals “would harm, not benefit, AI competition.”
“Without Google partnerships with and investments in companies like Anthropic, the AI frontier would be dominated by only the largest tech giants — including Google itself — giving application developers and end users fewer alternatives,” Anthropic said.
Tech industry groups Engine Advocacy and TechNet joined Anthropic on the brief.
Antitrust enforcers have asked Mehta to require Google to take a range of actions including sharing its search data with competitors, selling off its Chrome browser, and ceasing multibillion dollar payments to Apple and other companies that set Google as the default search engine on new devices.
An earlier proposal by the DOJ would have required Google to sell its AI investments.
Google has said making its agreements non-exclusive, as it has already begun to do, is the right approach.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)
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