Anthropic Says DOJ Plan Would Harm AI Investment

The US Federal Trade Commission has backed a Justice Department proposal that would see Google share search data with competitors, while Google partner Anthropic criticised another element of the Justice Department’s plan as harmful to AI investment.

A range of organisations, experts and interest groups have been filing briefs for and against the department’s proposals as a Washington, DC court moves toward the conclusion this month of the remedy phase of Google’s antitrust trial.

Last August US federal judge Ahmit Mehta found Google acted as an illegal monopoly in maintaining dominance of its core search business.

Privacy

The FTC, which acts as the US’ de facto privacy regulator, said the DOJ’s plan includes adequate privacy safeguards and argued increased competition would force Google to improve its privacy practices.

The agency said a proposed committee to oversee compliance would be similar to the FTC’s own privacy-related settlements.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has argued the measure would amount to giving away Google’s intellectual property, and the company has said it would harm user privacy.

AI start-up Anthropic, which is a key Google partner, said in a filing on Friday that a proposed requirement to give the DOJ advance notice of AI investments and partnerships would create a “significant disincentive” for Google to invest in smaller AI companies and would likely mean it would refrain from such investments entirely.

The measure “would harm, not benefit, AI competition”, Anthropic said in the filing.

Break-up plans

Google holds a minority stake worth billions of dollars in Anthropic.

Other measures proposed by the DOJ include forcing Google to sell off its Chrome browser and cease its multi-billion dollar annual payments to Apple and others to set it as the default search engine.

Google has argued it is enough to make the agreements non-exclusive.

At the beginning of the remedies trial last month, Google said the DOJ proposals would “hamstring” US AI development and hand the initiative to companies from China like DeepSeek.