The DOJ wants Perplexity’s boss to testify in its Google antitrust case

A US court ruled in August that Google is the only search engine, and while Google appeals, the Justice Department is considering what kind of penalties could be issued – such as terminating Chrome.

As part of this process, the DOJ wants to call a specific witness, according to a recent court filing: Dmitry Shevelenko, CEO of Perplexity, an AI search provider that recently valued at $9 billion, via Reuters.

Confusion and other productive AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search have emerged as a possible alternative to internet searches, as they can provide specific answers to complex questions (albeit, sometimes with artificial or inaccurate information). Google has responded to the threat with its AI search tools, such as AI Overviews, which provide AI-generated answers in addition to search results.

The DOJ wants to question Shevelenko about “AI’s ongoing relationship with search access points, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing.”

“Search hotspots” is the term the DOJ uses to describe things like Google Chrome – places where people go to search the Internet.

While the filing doesn’t exactly explain why the DOJ wants to question Confusion about these topics, it could help its argument that Google dominates the search business and shuts out potential competitors, and thus deserves stronger penalties.

TechCrunch asked Perplexity whether it agreed to have its CEO testify and what it thought about the antitrust lawsuit. Confusion did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Google.

Chaos is well-entrenched in the middle of the conflict, as both sides seek information from him that can help their cases. Google called Perplexity in October for the company’s documents to make its own case that it has effective competition in the search field. (Google called out Microsoft and OpenAI as well.)

However, Perplexity has not provided “a single document” to Google since December 11, the tech giant complained in a court filing, saying “there is no possible reason for further delay” after two months of waiting.

Perplexity, on the other hand, says in a filing that it has already agreed to fulfill 12 of Google’s 14 document requests but is “still evaluating the burden associated with collecting a potentially scalable area of ​​documents.”

Perplexity also says that while it agreed to provide copies of license agreements “relating to AI training,” Google wants all of Perplexity’s license agreements and that it has asked Google to “meet and provide” this.