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The Google trial is going to rewrite our future
These prosecutions typically spark innovation in unexpected ways.
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The point of the Google prosecution is not to hurt Google, but to force it to make way for the next generation of technologists and their dreams.
PHOTO: AFP
Tim Wu
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The Google antitrust trial, which began last week, is ostensibly focused on the past – on a series of deals that Google made with other companies over the past two decades. The prosecution in the case, US et al. v. Google, contends that the tech giant illegally spent billions of dollars paying off Samsung and Apple
But the true focus of the trial, like that of the Federal Trade Commission’s coming trial of Facebook’s parent company Meta on monopolisation charges, is on the future. For the verdict will effectively establish the rules governing tech competition for the next decade, including the battle over commercialised artificial intelligence (AI), and newer technologies we cannot yet envision.
