During the antitrust trial against Google, OpenAI representative Nick Turley stated that the company is interested in acquiring the Chrome browser if it is put up for sale. Turley noted that acquiring Chrome would allow OpenAI “to offer a truly unique experience” and “show users what a browser with an AI-first approach could be,” Bloomberg reports.
The court is considering the possibility of forcing the sale of Chrome as one of the remedies to eliminate Google’s monopoly in the online search market. Last year, Judge Amit Mehta found Google to be a monopolist, and the current stage of the trial concerns determining which specific business practices the company must change. Google plans to appeal the decision.
According to Turley, OpenAI already contacted Google last year about a potential partnership that would allow ChatGPT to use Google’s search technologies. The court also revealed an OpenAI email stating: “We believe that having multiple partners, including Google, would allow us to offer a better product to users.” However, Google declined the partnership, and according to Turley, “we currently do not have a partnership with Google.”
OpenAI is also working on its own search index. According to Turley, the company initially planned for ChatGPT to use this index for eight out of ten search queries by the end of 2025, but now OpenAI believes it will take several years to achieve this goal.
