OpenAI tells judge it would buy Chrome from Google

If Google is forced to sell off Chrome, ChatGPT’s head of product told a judge today that OpenAI would be interested in buying the browser, Reuters reports.

Google breaking off Chrome is a proposed remedy by the US Department of Justice in US v. Google, in which Judge Amit Mehta ruled last year that the company is a monopolist in online search. The remedies phase of the trial began on Monday. Google plans to appeal the ruling.

The OpenAI exec, Nick Turley, also testified that OpenAI had contacted Google last year about a potential partnership that would allow ChatGPT to use Google’s search technology. ChatGPT can pull from Bing’s search information, and while Turley apparently did not specifically discuss Microsoft, he noted that OpenAI has had “significant quality issues” with a company referred to as “Provider No. 1,” according to Bloomberg.

“We believe having multiple partners, and in particular Google’s API, would enable us to provide a better product to users,” OpenAI said in an email shown at the trial, Reuters says. Google chose not to partner with OpenAI, and Turley said that “we have no partnership with Google today.”

OpenAI has also been working on its own search index, and while OpenAI originally wanted to have ChatGPT use it for 80 percent of searches by the end of 2025, the company now believes reaching that milestone will take years, Turley testified, according to Bloomberg.