Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai expressed concerns during the trial in April that the data-sharing measures sought by the U.S. Department of Justice could enable Google's rivals to reverse-engineer its technology. By gaining insights into Google's market-leading IP, tech giants with giant coffers could make a new run at the search market. Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab might make a renewed push to improve the market share of Bing, and Apple, viewed as an AI laggard after failing to deliver on promised AI upgrades to key products like Siri, could try to enter the search market, Mathivanan said. Judge Mehta said in his order that allowing Google to continue paying other companies to promote its search engine "is more palatable now" because "established technology companies are making, and start-ups are receiving, hundreds of billions of dollars in capital to develop [generative AI] products that pose a threat to the primacy of traditional internet search."