A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google's search engine in a crackdown aimed at curbing the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly while rebuffing the U.S. government's attempt to break up the company and impose other restraints.
The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence — including conversational "answer engines" as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google's long-held position as the internet's main gateway.
The innovations and competition being unleashed by generative artificial intelligence, or "GenAI," have reshaped the judge's approach to remedies in the nearly five