New AI: Sundar Pichai's Monopolistic Fantasy

When Sundar Pichai swaggered into that post-I/O interview with The Verge, radiating the kind of confidence typically reserved for mob bosses or cryptocurrency evangelists, we witnessed something genuinely alarming: a CEO completely detached from the legal and ethical quicksand his company is sinking into. Like a modern Nero fiddling while Rome burns, Pichai spoke of "new phases" and "platform shifts" while federal judges systematically dismantle his empire for what it actually is—a predatory monopoly.

Let's call this what it is: Google has lost the plot entirely. The Department of Justice has now won two separate monopolization cases against Google in 2025, with federal judges ruling that Google "harmed Google's publishing customers" and finding the company liable for unlawfully monopolizing both search markets and digital advertising. Yet here's Pichai, playing dress-up as an innovator while his company faces the business equivalent of a controlled demolition.

The Great Content Heist

The most brazen example of Google's moral bankruptcy lies in its new AI Mode rollout. The News Media Alliance—representing The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox Media, and Condé Nast—has called Google's AI Mode "the definition of theft," noting that "Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return". This isn't hyperbole. It's an accurate description of a $2 trillion company systematically cannibalizing the web ecosystem it pretends to nurture.

Think about the audacity here. Google already extracts an estimated $4.7 billion in revenue from news publishers' content, and now it's doubling down by eliminating the last vestige of value exchange—clickable links. AI Mode doesn't just summarize content; it obliterates the fundamental economic model that keeps journalism alive. When users get AI-generated answers without visiting source websites, publishers lose the traffic and ad revenue that fund actual reporting. Google is essentially strip-mining the information ecosystem while positioning itself as its benevolent curator.

Publishers are already seeing potential traffic reductions of up to 40% from Google's AI-powered search features, and this is just the beginning. Google has constructed a perfect trap: with Google commanding nearly 90% of the global search engine market, opting out of search listings would be commercially damaging for most publishers, yet staying in means watching their content get repurposed with minimal attribution and no compensation.

Antitrust Avalanche

While Pichai pontificated about AI agents and custom search results pages, the legal walls were literally closing in around him. The Justice Department is seeking to force Google to sell Chrome—the world's most popular browser with 66% market share—as part of remedies that prosecutors have compared to past cases that resulted in the breakup of AT&T and Standard Oil.

Google faces a September trial on antitrust enforcers' proposals to sell off its ad exchange and publisher ad server business, with the DOJ also considering forcing Google to divest its Android mobile operating system if other remedies fail. This isn't regulatory theater—this is the systematic dismantling of the most dangerous monopoly in modern history.

The parallels to historical monopoly busts are unavoidable. Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt Law School, notes this case is "at least as big a deal as the Microsoft case" from 25 years ago, and comparable to "the Justice Department's 1906 Standard Oil case, which is widely considered the first major monopoly case". Yet Pichai acts as though federal judges ruling against his company are minor inconveniences rather than existential threats.

Market Reality Check

Behind all the AI bluster, Google's actual market position tells a different story. Google's global search market share has dipped below 90% for the first time in a decade, falling to approximately 89% in 2025. Microsoft's Bing has grown to 4% market share, largely due to its integration with OpenAI's technology, while emerging AI platforms are gaining traction with "3x the number of releases Jan-May 2025 vs. the same period in 2024".

This isn't growth—it's defensive positioning from a company watching its moat evaporate. Even OpenAI has testified that it would be interested in buying Chrome if antitrust enforcers force Google to sell, signaling that the broader industry views Google's breakup not as a hypothetical but as an inevitability.

The Web's Funeral Director

Perhaps most insidiously, Google has positioned itself as both the web's undertaker and its beneficiary. Pichai's vision of AI Mode creating "custom search results pages" with "interactive charts and potentially other kinds of apps" isn't innovation—it's the systematic replacement of the open web with Google's walled garden. When AI agents do most of the browsing for users, what happens to the websites those agents crawl? They become data mines for Google's AI while their creators watch their traffic and revenue vanish.

This is digital colonialism in its purest form. Google extracts value from millions of websites, publishers, and content creators, then uses that extracted value to eliminate the need for users to visit those same sources. It's like a restaurant critic who eats at every establishment in town, then opens a food truck outside each restaurant describing the meals in detail, ensuring no one ever needs to go inside.

The Arrogance of Impunity

What makes Pichai's performance particularly galling is the serene confidence with which he discusses the future while ignoring the legal tsunami bearing down on his company. This is a CEO who believes his monopoly is so entrenched that even federal judges and antitrust enforcers can't touch it. He's banking on the complexity of technology regulation and the glacial pace of government intervention to preserve his empire.

But the empire is crumbling. As DOJ's Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater stated outside the courthouse, "You know what is dangerous? The threat Google presents to our freedom of speech" and digital market innovation. The government isn't just coming for Google's search monopoly—it's dismantling the entire apparatus that allows one company to control information access for billions of people.

We're witnessing the final act of a corporate tragedy. Google, once the scrappy upstart that benefited from Microsoft's antitrust woes, has become the very monster it once challenged. Pichai's confidence at I/O wasn't strength—it was the delusion of a monopolist who can't see the gallows being constructed outside his window.

The only question remaining is whether the web ecosystem will survive long enough to benefit from Google's inevitable dismantling.

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