Sundar Pichai thanks Trump for helping Google in antitrust case

Sundar Pichai said it to Donald Trump’s face: the win in Google’s antitrust case had a lot to do with the president’s time in office.

At a Thursday dinner hosted at the White House with other tech executives, Trump looked straight at the Google CEO and said, “Well you had a very good day yesterday … Do you want to talk about that big day you had yesterday?”

That “big day” was the moment Alphabet, Google’s parent company, added $230 billion to its market cap after dodging a forced breakup in a federal court ruling, as was reported by Cryptopolitan.

The antitrust case, first launched by the Department of Justice in 2020, accused Google of running an illegal monopoly in the search market. Judge Amit Mehta ruled this week that while Google did break the law, the DOJ’s most extreme demands weren’t justified.

That ruling triggered a surge in Google’s stock price. Sundar didn’t argue. “I’m glad it’s over,” he told Trump at the table, getting laughs from the other guests. “It’s a long process … Appreciate that your administration had a constructive dialogue, and we were able to get it to some resolution.” Trump simply replied, “Right.”

Google walks away with billions and no major restrictions

The ruling wasn’t a light slap. It acknowledged wrongdoing. But it also shut down the DOJ’s harsher ideas, like forcing Google to break up or stop paying Apple billions per year to stay the default search engine on iPhones. That deal alone is worth billions, helping Apple and keeping Google at the top of the food chain.

On Tuesday, Apple’s stock jumped 4% after hours, clearly pleased with the court’s decision. Mehta’s decision was a dunk. “Google will not be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products,” the judge wrote.

He added that cutting off those payments would likely hurt other companies and even users. In short, the court wasn’t willing to break what’s already profitable for multiple parties.

But it wasn’t a total escape. Google was told to open up some of its data. During the May remedies trial, the DOJ asked the court to make Google share the data it uses to generate search results, especially data based on what users click.

The judge agreed partially. Google now has to share some search index data and user interaction data, but not ads data. Advertisers won’t be getting access to the deep, granular datasets they hoped for.

Still, Google won’t have to give that data away for free. Mehta said any sharing has to happen on “ordinary commercial terms,” meaning Google can still charge or control how it’s done, as long as it’s in line with their usual syndication deals.

Trump links win to AI agenda and past DOJ decisions

The Thursday night dinner wasn’t just about search engines. Sundar pivoted the conversation to artificial intelligence. “The AI moment is one of the most transformative moments any of us have ever seen or will see in our lifetimes,” he told Trump. “Already the AI action plan under your leadership I think is a great start, and we look forward to working together. And thanks for your leadership.”

He was talking about the “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” which was launched in July. It’s a 90-policy plan across three areas: speeding up innovation, building AI infrastructure, and pushing American AI dominance on the global stage. One part of that plan is it bans AI tools that use “Woke AI” or “ideological dogmas such as DEI,” which refers to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Trump also made it political. He cut in while Sundar was speaking and said, “Biden was the one who prosecuted that lawsuit, you know that right?” But the facts show otherwise, the DOJ filed the case while Trump was still in office during his first term. Sundar didn’t respond.

Earlier that same day, Sundar showed up at another White House event, the AI Education Taskforce, hosted by First Lady Melania Trump. The goal? More government presence in AI policy. And apparently, Google wants to stay in that loop.

There’s more on the legal side too. Google is still dealing with a separate lawsuit from Trump. That one was filed more than four years ago and is still active. It focuses on YouTube, which is owned by Google, and accuses the platform of unlawful censorship after Trump’s accounts were suspended post-January 6 Capitol riot. Both legal teams are now in talks.

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