Google’s contract with Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola blocked the smartphone maker from setting Perplexity AI as the default assistant on its new devices, Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko testified at Google’s antitrust trial, according to Bloomberg.
Shevelenko told Judge Amit Mehta that despite both parties wanting Perplexity’s AI app to be the default assistant, Motorola “can’t get out of their Google obligations and so they are unable to change the default assistant on the device.” Instead, Perplexity’s app will come preloaded on new Motorola devices but won’t appear on the home screen.
Shevelenko said Perplexity has one signed agreement to have its AI assistant pre-installed on a company’s devices and is currently negotiating another. A Google executive previously testified that Motorola will add Perplexity to its phones later this year. Perplexity is also in talks with Samsung Electronics Co., according to Bloomberg.
The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google led to the hearing, which aims to determine a remedy after Google was found to have an illegal monopoly in search. Judge Mehta previously ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market through payments to smartphone makers, wireless carriers, and browsers.
Shevelenko spends 75% of his time working to reach partnerships with carriers and phonemakers to distribute Perplexity’s app, describing it as a “jungle gym” to change the default AI assistant from Google’s Gemini to Perplexity on an Android phone. He stated that Google’s contracts are like a “gun to your head” and that phonemakers and carriers should be liberated from these restrictions.
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Shevelenko credited the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Google for enabling Perplexity’s partnerships, saying that Google being “under pressure” has allowed phonemakers, carriers, and browsers to have more dialogue with the company. He also mentioned that Perplexity is working on its own browser, Comet, based on Chromium, Google’s open-source version of Chrome.
The trial also heard from Sissie Hsiao, Google’s former head of Gemini, who described the current AI product environment as highly competitive, with companies frequently releasing new models and innovations every few months.
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