A U.S. court ruled in August that Google has a search monopoly, and while Google appeals, the Justice Department is figuring out what kind of potential penalties to impose — like breaking off Chrome.
As part of this process, the DOJ wants to call on a specific witness, according to a recent court filing: Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer of Perplexity, an AI search provider most recently valued at $9 billion, per Reuters.
Perplexity and other generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search have emerged as a potential replacement for searching the internet, as they can offer direct answers to complicated queries (albeit, sometimes with made-up or inaccurate information). Google has responded to the threat with its own AI search tools, such as AI Overviews, which provide AI-generated answers above search results.
The DOJ wants to ask Shevelenko about “generative AI’s relationship with Search Access Points, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing.”
“Search access points” is a term the DOJ uses to describe things like Google Chrome — places where people go to search the internet.
While the filing doesn’t spell out exactly why the DOJ wants to ask Perplexity about these topics, it could help its argument that Google monopolizes the search business and closes out potential competitors, and thus deserves stronger penalties.
TechCrunch asked Perplexity whether it has agreed to have its executive testify and for its thoughts on the antitrust case. Perplexity didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment, and neither did Google.
Perplexity is effectively caught in the middle of the dispute, as both sides want information from it that could help their cases. Google subpoenaed Perplexity in October for company documents to make its own case that it has viable competition in the search field. (Google subpoenaed Microsoft and OpenAI as well.)
However, Perplexity has yet to provide “a single document” to Google as of December 11, the tech giant lamented in a court filing, claiming that there is “no conceivable justification for further delay” after two months of waiting.
For its part, Perplexity says in the filing that it has already agreed to fulfill 12 out of Google’s 14 document requests but is “still evaluating the burden associated with collecting such a potentially expansive universe of documents.”
Perplexity also says that while it has agreed to provide copies of licensing agreements “related to AI training,” Google wants all of Perplexity’s licensing agreements and that it has asked Google to “meet and confer” about this.