Google's Antitrust Trial Wraps Up: Will Chrome Be Sold?

So, get this Alphabet's Google and the government's antitrust folks are wrapping up their huge trial today. They're gonna make their final points about whether Google should have to sell its Chrome browser or do other stuff to make online search fairer for everyone.

The U.S. Department of Justice and a bunch of states are pushing hard. They don't just want Google to sell Chrome, but also to share search data and stop those big payments to companies like Apple and phone carriers that make Google the default search on new phones. These ideas are all about fixing things after a judge said last year that Google is illegally way too dominant in online search and the ads that go with it.

Apparently, this whole thing could actually help AI companies, which are already making Google sweat a little as the main place people go to find stuff online.

Judge Amit Mehta is in charge of this trial, which started way back in April. He said he hopes to decide on these proposals by August. And get this, if the judge *does* say Google has to sell off Chrome, OpenAI is interested in buying it! That's what Nick Turley, who's in charge of products for ChatGPT at OpenAI, said during the trial. He also mentioned that getting access to Google's search data would be awesome for OpenAI because it would make their answers way more accurate and current.

Google, though, says these ideas are way over the top and would basically hand their technology to competitors. They've already started letting phone makers like Samsung use other search and AI products, by the way. But the DOJ wants the judge to go even further and completely ban Google from making those big payments to get their search app pre-loaded.