Microsoft worries about how Google's dominance will affect AI

Google is in the hot seat now, as the company is engaged in a massive antitrust lawsuit. On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stand to voice his concerns on the matter, and he voiced some of his opinions and fears regarding the company’s grip on the search market. According to CNN Business, Microsoft worries about how Google’s dominance will affect the future of AI.

First and foremost, what is the lawsuit about?

Large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and others usually have a large portion of a certain market. Google has such a tight grip on the search engine market that the United States DoJ (Department of Justice) dragged it into court on suspicions that Google maintains a monopoly on the market.

It’s the most used search engine in the world, and its grip makes it hard for other search engines to thrive. The trial is expected to go on into November, so an official verdict is not in sight for the near future.

Microsoft worries about how Google’s dominance will affect the future of AI

Nadella took the stand during the trial and he mostly talked about how Google has the search market covered. Microsoft’s Bing browser on desktop is sitting in the low teens in terms of market share. Meanwhile, Bing couldn’t even crack a 10% market share. Google, on the other hand, is the default search engine for much of the world.

He then moved on to an interesting subject, AI. Nadella spoke about how Google is such a large company with so much access to people’s data to train its LLMs. This, Nadella argued, would give the company an unfair advantage. Ostensibly, with access to so much more data, the company could easily make its AI much better than the competition.

This is definitely a strong point that the Microsoft CEO brought up. Google’s dominance gives it access to a ton of data from across the internet. The government is just starting to crack into how companies obtain data to train their AI. If it’s true that Google’s size gives it an unfair advantage, then this case might not go well for the company.