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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said he has “a lot of concerns around privacy” if Google 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.
Pichai testified in Google’s monopoly case on Wednesday. US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google’s online search business violated US antitrust law and 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 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.
Earlier, Pichai was asked about the threat of AI chatbots to Google search. The Justice Department has argued that the company could use its AI products to bolster its dominance in search by using its powerful search data.
Pichai’s point was that Google’s dominance is by no means assured. He said the field is wide open in Gen AI, with OpenAI’s Chat GPT in the leading position, plus more entrants than he can 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.”
This story is developing and will be updated.
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