Google urged a D.C. federal judge Monday not to let OpenAI wade into the U.S. Department of Justice's case against its search monopoly, arguing the ChatGPT maker is too late and is advocating for help "grounding" its artificial intelligence model, even though the judge explicitly rejected just such a remedy.

With U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta weighing exactly how to craft mandates requiring Google to prop up rivals with data and syndicated search results, Google argued in an opposition brief that OpenAI was "plainly untimely" when it filed a proposed amicus brief weeks after a hearing and nearly two months after the court's remedies decision.

It also accused OpenAI of pursuing "a thinly disguised request for reconsideration of the court's September 2 opinion."

"This court rejected plaintiffs' proposed grounding remedy," Google said, referring to the proposal to force it to syndicate its search results for use by generative artificial intelligence firms looking to anchor their responses in reality, producing more practical results less prone to AI "hallucinations."

"Although OpenAI coyly avoids using the term 'grounding' in its proposed brief, OpenAI's demand for 'syndication usage beyond display of the ten blue links' is the same request for grounding that it unsuccessfully supported at the remedies hearing," Google said.

The goal of the remedies is to open up competition that Judge Mehta found last year had been closed off by Google's effectively exclusive distribution contracts with Mozilla, Apple, Samsung and others, under which Google paid billions of dollars annually in shared search advertising revenue to be made the default search engine on their browsers and devices.

While Judge Mehta in September rejected calls by the DOJ and its state partners to divest the Chrome browser or ban those default contracts and payments entirely, he decided Google should prop up current and would-be search rivals left behind by the default agreement lockout and the massive data advantage the lockout ultimately conferred to Google.

His early September order explicitly envisioned treating generative AI companies like OpenAI as qualified competitors eligible to receive Google's data and syndicated results.

That ruling teed up further briefing on how to craft the final judgment that Judge Mehta hopes to issue relatively quickly, where he'll decide between Google's push for minimal remedies and calls by the DOJ to give qualified competitors as much of a boost as possible.

OpenAI sought permission Friday to file an amicus brief calling for flexibility in the syndication mandates. It argued that Google's proposed restrictions "would effectively gut these remedies" by limiting competitors' display of syndicated search results to 10 blue links, thus preventing use in a way that meshes with ChatGPT's conversational, narrative responses to user queries.

The problem with that argument, Google said Monday, is that syndication of its web results "is what plaintiffs and other general search engines like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo sought," and what Judge Mehta ordered.

"What OpenAI seeks is the ability to feed Google's web results into its AI models, i.e., to ground on Google's web results. That is precisely what the court rejected in its denial of compelled syndication of FastSearch results … and in its holding that Google may place its ordinary commercial restrictions on the use of syndicated results," Google said. "A qualified competitor will receive other information under the proposed final judgments that it can use to improve its product, such as search index data and user interaction data under section IV of the parties' proposed final judgments."

Google argued that conversely, syndication is only supposed to help rivals bridge the gap with Google in the short term, "not as a means for rivals to obtain unrestricted access to Google's intellectual property to improve their own products."

OpenAI is one of two likely data recipients to have weighed in, the other being privacy-focused search rival DuckDuckGo, which submitted its own proposed amicus brief Oct. 1, before Judge Mehta held an early October hearing on the competing proposals.

DuckDuckGo reported, in seeking permission to file its amicus brief, that Google did not consent to the submission — Judge Mehta permitted the amicus filing. But Google never filed an opposition brief contesting that submission.

In OpenAI's case, the search giant pointed to the weeks since the early October hearing and the earlier filings fighting to shape the final judgment. Any amicus intervention, it said, should have come "long ago so that Google could respond in full."

Google argued that permitting the amicus brief would be similarly prejudicial to it as a filing Judge Mehta rejected from adMarketplace Inc. the same day he issued his remedies decision. There, Judge Mehta noted a May 9 deadline to submit amicus briefs, which adMarketplace missed by more than two months.

Google also assailed the amicus brief as lacking anything uniquely important to the court's considerations, accusing the AI company of trying "to wipe away the evidentiary record and reverse the court's opinion using inaccurate assertions and lawyers' arguments," even though it has no monopoly power over search syndication.

"OpenAI wants Google to be forced to ground ChatGPT on syndication terms that would never arise from a commercial negotiation. ... And it seeks this remedy — which was already rejected by the court — even though 'OpenAI calculated its share of the U.S. market as of December 2024 to be approximately 85%,'" Google said, quoting the remedy decision and arguing OpenAI has managed to ground ChatGPT, without any help from the court, in a field where AI models are constantly jockeying to be the best.

"Moreover, OpenAI seeks this remedy even though ChatGPT — the fastest growing consumer product in history — is not a general search engine and has not even arguably been harmed by the search distribution and promotion agreements challenged by plaintiffs in this case," Google continued.

OpenAI declined to comment Monday, and a representative for Google did not immediately respond to a press inquiry. Law360 reached out to the DOJ, but it is subject to the government shutdown.

Future disputes in the case will not be limited to the ultimate injunction. Google has vowed to appeal, as it has in the separate DOJ case over its advertising placement technology monopolies, where the parties just wrapped an 11-day remedies phase trial on the government's effort to breakup the business. It's also possible the DOJ will file a cross-appeal of the parts of Judge Mehta's remedies decision it doesn't like.

OpenAI is represented by Ashok Ramani and Serge A. Voronov of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

DuckDuckGo is represented by Melissa H. Maxman and Ronald F. Wick of Cohen & Gresser LLP.

The federal government is represented by David Dahlquist, Adam Severt, Veronica Onyema, Travis Chapman, Diana Aguilar, Sarah Bartels, Grant Fergusson, Kerrie Freeborn, Meagan Glynn, Richard Cameron Gower, Karl Herrmann, Ian Hoffman, John Hogan, Elizabeth Jensen, Ryan Karr, Claire Maddox, Michael McLellan, Keane Nowlan, Andrew Tisinger, Jennifer Wamsley and Catharine Wright of the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.

The states are represented by their respective attorneys general and William F. Cavanaugh Jr. of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.

Google is represented by John E. Schmidtlein, Benjamin M. Greenblum, Colette T. Connor, Kenneth C. Smurzynski, Graham W. Safty, Christopher Yeager, Gloria K. Maier and Aaron P. Maurer of Williams & Connolly LLP, Michael S. Sommer and Franklin M. Rubinstein of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC, and Mark S. Popofsky and Matthew L. McGinnis of Ropes & Gray LLP.

The cases are U.S. et al. v. Google LLC, case number 1:20-cv-03010, and Colorado et al. v. Google LLC, case number 1:20-cv-03715, both in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.