Google strives to retain the bundling rights of "Gemini + YouTube + Maps" to counter the U.S. Department of Justice's injunction

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, on Wednesday local time, Google's (GOOGL.US) lawyer John Schmidtlin stated in a hearing at the U.S. Federal Court before Judge Amit Mehta that they hope to continue bundling popular map and video applications with Gemini AI services in response to the U.S. Department of Justice's previous proposal to prohibit this. Schmidtlin emphasized that "there is currently no indication that Google has obtained a monopoly or market power in the artificial intelligence market," while also noting that the court has not determined that Google Maps or YouTube constitutes a monopolistic product.

Previously, Judge Mehta had ruled that Google engaged in monopolistic behavior in its search and search advertising business and is formulating targeted remedial measures. In last month's ruling, he prohibited Google from paying partners for exclusive access to search, the Chrome browser, or the Google Play Store, but did not completely ban all forms of payment. This ruling incorporated some proposals from both sides of the Google antitrust case, so both parties advocated for the judge to adopt their respective wording during Wednesday's hearing.

During the trial, witness testimonies revealed that Google imposed bundling conditions on device manufacturers, stating "either pre-install all or you cannot use the Play Store," requiring them to pre-install nearly ten Google applications if they wanted to use the Play Store, the largest app store on the Android system. For example, Microsoft's Surface Duo touchscreen device was forced to adopt Google Search instead of its own Bing engine. The Department of Justice believes that the previous bans on search, Chrome, and Play should be extended to Gemini, but Google has explicitly opposed this.

From a data perspective, YouTube's position as the preferred television service for all age groups remains strong. The latest data from Nielsen shows that its market share has surpassed that of all television networks and streaming services under Walt Disney, with advertising revenue exceeding that of the four major broadcast networks combined, and users' daily viewing time exceeding 1 billion hours.

Google Maps holds an absolute dominant position in the digital mapping and navigation market, with over 2 billion monthly active users, making it one of the most widely used products under Google. In contrast, Apple (AAPL.US) disclosed in 2020 that its map users were in the "hundreds of millions" range, and over 5 million third-party applications and websites rely on the Google Maps platform for location service support.

It is noteworthy that during the Biden administration, the Department of Justice investigated potential antitrust behavior by Google Maps but ultimately did not file a lawsuit. In this hearing, Schmidtlin cited Microsoft's integration of CoPilot AI into Office software as an example, arguing that the artificial intelligence industry is still in a developmental stage, and Google should have the right to adopt business strategies similar to other companies.

However, Judge Mehta expressed caution about allowing Google to require device manufacturers to "pre-install Gemini if they want to pre-install YouTube or Maps," stating that this could exacerbate its market advantage in AI services. DOJ lawyer Cameron Gahl urged the judge to impose the same restrictions on Gemini as those applied to Chrome As of now, Judge Meta has not disclosed a specific timeline for the final ruling, and the subsequent developments in the case still require ongoing attention