Google is fighting one of its biggest battles with the US government and 38 US states. The trial that began in early September has the US government and states claim that Google locks in a huge data advantage through exclusive contracts and payments of more than $10 billion a year to Apple, Samsung and others to be the default search engine on smartphones and PC browsers to get more users. Google has countered these arguments with several of its own, zeroing in on how the high quality of its search products have played a crucial role in customer demand and help explain the prominent placement on phones and tablets.
As the case continues, Google’s biggest defense has been that its innovation explains the company’s success as the giant of internet search. According to a report in the New York Times, the company puts its competitive advantage over its brilliant people, working tirelessly to improve its products. On Wednesday, October 18, Alphabet‘s Google called its first witness on the witness stand, an executive who detailed the vast effort that the company puts into ensuring search quality.
Google VP Pandu Nayak took to the witness box and maintained the same line of defense. Nayak reportedly went through the long string of research advances at Google that have improved search quality, including developments in machine learning, deep learning, transformers and large language models — the technology behind AI-driven chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
The evolution Nayak traced was one in which innovations in language understanding have become increasingly important to gains in search quality, while the sheer volume of search queries has become less important.
AIn his testimony, Nayak discussed the investments Google has made in search, including amassing and constantly updating a vast index of the web.
(with agency inputs)