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Y Combinator says Google is a monopolist, no comment about its OpenAI ties

126 points by mastazi 1y ago

dpiers 1y ago
We are in the process of abandoning ChatGPT Enterprise because Google is now bundling Gemini access for free with Google Workspace. If OpenAI is not safe from anticompetitive practices then no YC startup is.
WorldPeas 1y ago
OpenAI allows you to plug its llm engine into most anything. Google does not. that alone should debunk this.
- happyopossum 1y ago
  What can you plug OpenAI into that you can’t with Gemini or vertex? Heck, you can run Claude and llama on vertex!
  - WorldPeas 1y ago
    I was more referring to their search engine and proprietary office products, they cannot be altered or api-d without permission of google, it was OpenAI that introduced the API norm, which Google would likely have not adopted if they had done this on their own terms
- fyrn_ 1y ago
  That and this was a hearing for the _Google_ antitrust case you can't just randomly wander off topic and self incriminate yourself in this context. Unclear what Techcrunch expected
arealaccount 1y ago
> It also wants Google to do things it argues would help startups, like opening up Google’s search index so others can train LLMs on it. There’s a comment about OpenAI ties… kinda
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
benoau 1y ago
OpenAI is hardly a monopolist, and the way it's shaping up so far LLM-based search is being provided by 3rd-parties like DuckDuckGo offering multiple models to choose from.
- manquer 1y ago
  It is because OpenAI is a competitor for Google search, not because OAI is also a monopoly. YC has a conflict of interest because of their relation to OpenAI(YC research) and Sam Altman directly. YC doesn’t after all often amicus briefs in court, the relationship was a definitely a factor in doing so. Stating that relationship clearly and disclosing financial upside they may get in the soon to be for profit conversion is relevant to this case. The google decision could have implications for OpenAI’s business and therefore their enterprise value .
- lxgr 1y ago
  I'd be surprised if DuckDuckGo had more LLM users than ChatGPT has search users. Even Perplexity probably doesn't come close.
  - benoau 1y ago
    Apple Intelligence is another example integrating (intending to anyway) a variety of services you can choose between. Cursor as well. It actually feels like the ability to easily switch between rival models is a pretty standard feature of 3rd party services. And right now it feels like nobody is trying to stop this!
    - harrisonjackson 1y ago
      We will see what happens with the windsurf acquisition. This is one of the best things with the community though. Both the OSS solutions and wrappers.
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
YC being a monopolist doesn’t make Google not a monopolist. Bringing in some random hypocrisy is a great way to unmake your own point, TechCrunch.
- j45 1y ago
  I may have missed something: YC is a monopolist?
  - iwontberude 1y ago
    You would think starting thousands and thousands of companies with the goal of being disruptive to incumbents in often monopolistic industries would have earned them something but I guess not lol.
- jamroom 1y ago
  The article doesn't appear to say that OpenAI is a monopolist - it's more a conflict of interest: However, YC is also closely tied to OpenAI, which is now directly competing against Google on search. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman used to run YC, while OpenAI was the first group affiliated with YC Research.
  - iwontberude 1y ago
    Which is a strange statement because OpenAI is not directly competing against Google on search. They don’t have a public search engine and rely on Bing for search results — they do something greater and more broad than search. Conflating product categories to make this point is not effective for whatever argument they are making here.
    - cableshaft 1y ago
      ChatGPT is absolutely taking people away from Google. People are turning to that instead of a search engine for more and more things now. Here's one article about it: https://www.techradar.com/tech/people-are-increasingly-swapping-google-for-the-likes-of-chatgpt-according-to-a-major-survey-heres-why https://www.techradar.com/tech/people-are-increasingly-swapp...
nand_gate 1y ago
Isn't YC well positioned to disrupt Google's monopoly? They just need to pause funding AI slop and focus on quality again, even if it means doubling the standard deal to get the necessary talent interested.
mountainriver 1y ago
Google is a massive monopoly, I’m glad we are starting to fight this stuff again. Google, Amazon, and Apple all have insane monopolies that are not healthy
- Clubber 1y ago
  Google is certainly a monopoly in several sectors, search and YouTube come to mind. Amazon is a duopoly with Walmart and both need to be dismantled, but the damage to main street was done a long time ago. I'm not sure where Apple is a monopoly. People argue the App Store but only for the iPhone and iPad, but I feel that takes some mental gymnastics since it's somewhat niche and other stores for other phones exist.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    I agree, but the way the law is applied in the United States, anything that increases prices is more likely to be seen as a monopoly from a legal perspective. Thats a reason why Apple is so against the opening up of the App market, and wanted to die on the hill of stopping apps for letting people know about offline purchase options. They had issues long ago with the iBooks Store, of all things. Particularly absurd given the nature of Amazon’s business.
mortsnort 1y ago
The fact that Google sells the ads on the websites it serves as search results is a major problem. It's become normalized that the Internet is a barely usable ad ridden hellscape (ever try to read any recipe on your phone?). Imagine if Google punished sites for overly intrusive ads in its result rankings? We'd have a whole better internet.
- fuzzzerd 1y ago
  That is definitely a search engine I would like to use. If it existed.
teleforce 1y ago
You can safely say now the pendulum is swinging back towards Google if YC is complaining, and there's probably moat in AI after all [1]. Google has Google Search, Gmail, Scholar, Patents, Books, Maps, Workspace, Drive, Gemini and Youtube just to name several killer applications that are being widely used by billions of people every single day [2]. I think NotebookLM is easily one of best products come up from Google since the initial search engine with PageRank. It's a combination of virtual personal and research assistant that's very helpful that keep you in the driving seat with much less hallucinations compared to your typical LLMs including Google own Gemini. Never paid Google for all its services all my life but now I'd probably would pay for NotebookLM, and get 2 TB storage on top of that, that's telling something from the user of the early Google years, of more than 20 years. [1] Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI” (1039 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322 [2] List of Google products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products
- mastazi 1y ago
  I've watched a video about NotebookLM podcast generation functionality, and I thought it was impressive. While I realize that it definitely doesn't replace actual podcasts, I immediately thought of many novel and interesting uses for it. Narration is a powerful tool and IME ingesting sources in a narrative form helps my brain to better internalize information.
  - teleforce 1y ago
    Yep the podcast looks very intuitive, surreal and nifty at the same time. It's interactive thus you can interrupt the session to get the response dynamically and immediately from the virtual panel and host.
dang 1y ago
Recent and related: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945820 - May 2025 (936 comments)
portnoyd 1y ago
Both YC and Google are legalized illusions that obfuscate who benefits from YC and Google Top of the org chart at these businesses should be the actual target, not the paper trail they set up to protect them.
jonbehr808 1y ago
Kudos to Garry Tan for not only recognizing Google’s long-running manipulation of the search landscape, but for taking principled action in this pivotal case. It’s rare to see a tech leader willing to both speak truth to power and back it up with decisive legal support—thank you.

126 points by mastazi 1y ago

We are in the process of abandoning ChatGPT Enterprise because Google is now bundling Gemini access for free with Google Workspace. If OpenAI is not safe from anticompetitive practices then no YC startup is.

WorldPeas 1y ago

OpenAI allows you to plug its llm engine into most anything. Google does not. that alone should debunk this.

happyopossum 1y ago
What can you plug OpenAI into that you can’t with Gemini or vertex? Heck, you can run Claude and llama on vertex!
- WorldPeas 1y ago
  I was more referring to their search engine and proprietary office products, they cannot be altered or api-d without permission of google, it was OpenAI that introduced the API norm, which Google would likely have not adopted if they had done this on their own terms
fyrn_ 1y ago
That and this was a hearing for the _Google_ antitrust case you can't just randomly wander off topic and self incriminate yourself in this context. Unclear what Techcrunch expected

arealaccount 1y ago

> It also wants Google to do things it argues would help startups, like opening up Google’s search index so others can train LLMs on it. There’s a comment about OpenAI ties… kinda

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

benoau 1y ago

OpenAI is hardly a monopolist, and the way it's shaping up so far LLM-based search is being provided by 3rd-parties like DuckDuckGo offering multiple models to choose from.

manquer 1y ago
It is because OpenAI is a competitor for Google search, not because OAI is also a monopoly. YC has a conflict of interest because of their relation to OpenAI(YC research) and Sam Altman directly. YC doesn’t after all often amicus briefs in court, the relationship was a definitely a factor in doing so. Stating that relationship clearly and disclosing financial upside they may get in the soon to be for profit conversion is relevant to this case. The google decision could have implications for OpenAI’s business and therefore their enterprise value .
lxgr 1y ago
I'd be surprised if DuckDuckGo had more LLM users than ChatGPT has search users. Even Perplexity probably doesn't come close.
- benoau 1y ago
  Apple Intelligence is another example integrating (intending to anyway) a variety of services you can choose between. Cursor as well. It actually feels like the ability to easily switch between rival models is a pretty standard feature of 3rd party services. And right now it feels like nobody is trying to stop this!
  - harrisonjackson 1y ago
    We will see what happens with the windsurf acquisition. This is one of the best things with the community though. Both the OSS solutions and wrappers.

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

YC being a monopolist doesn’t make Google not a monopolist. Bringing in some random hypocrisy is a great way to unmake your own point, TechCrunch.

j45 1y ago
I may have missed something: YC is a monopolist?
- iwontberude 1y ago
  You would think starting thousands and thousands of companies with the goal of being disruptive to incumbents in often monopolistic industries would have earned them something but I guess not lol.
jamroom 1y ago
The article doesn't appear to say that OpenAI is a monopolist - it's more a conflict of interest: However, YC is also closely tied to OpenAI, which is now directly competing against Google on search. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman used to run YC, while OpenAI was the first group affiliated with YC Research.
- iwontberude 1y ago
  Which is a strange statement because OpenAI is not directly competing against Google on search. They don’t have a public search engine and rely on Bing for search results — they do something greater and more broad than search. Conflating product categories to make this point is not effective for whatever argument they are making here.
  - cableshaft 1y ago
    ChatGPT is absolutely taking people away from Google. People are turning to that instead of a search engine for more and more things now. Here's one article about it: https://www.techradar.com/tech/people-are-increasingly-swapping-google-for-the-likes-of-chatgpt-according-to-a-major-survey-heres-why https://www.techradar.com/tech/people-are-increasingly-swapp...

nand_gate 1y ago

Isn't YC well positioned to disrupt Google's monopoly? They just need to pause funding AI slop and focus on quality again, even if it means doubling the standard deal to get the necessary talent interested.

mountainriver 1y ago

Google is a massive monopoly, I’m glad we are starting to fight this stuff again. Google, Amazon, and Apple all have insane monopolies that are not healthy

Clubber 1y ago
Google is certainly a monopoly in several sectors, search and YouTube come to mind. Amazon is a duopoly with Walmart and both need to be dismantled, but the damage to main street was done a long time ago. I'm not sure where Apple is a monopoly. People argue the App Store but only for the iPhone and iPad, but I feel that takes some mental gymnastics since it's somewhat niche and other stores for other phones exist.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  I agree, but the way the law is applied in the United States, anything that increases prices is more likely to be seen as a monopoly from a legal perspective. Thats a reason why Apple is so against the opening up of the App market, and wanted to die on the hill of stopping apps for letting people know about offline purchase options. They had issues long ago with the iBooks Store, of all things. Particularly absurd given the nature of Amazon’s business.

mortsnort 1y ago

The fact that Google sells the ads on the websites it serves as search results is a major problem. It's become normalized that the Internet is a barely usable ad ridden hellscape (ever try to read any recipe on your phone?). Imagine if Google punished sites for overly intrusive ads in its result rankings? We'd have a whole better internet.

fuzzzerd 1y ago
That is definitely a search engine I would like to use. If it existed.

teleforce 1y ago

You can safely say now the pendulum is swinging back towards Google if YC is complaining, and there's probably moat in AI after all [1]. Google has Google Search, Gmail, Scholar, Patents, Books, Maps, Workspace, Drive, Gemini and Youtube just to name several killer applications that are being widely used by billions of people every single day [2]. I think NotebookLM is easily one of best products come up from Google since the initial search engine with PageRank. It's a combination of virtual personal and research assistant that's very helpful that keep you in the driving seat with much less hallucinations compared to your typical LLMs including Google own Gemini. Never paid Google for all its services all my life but now I'd probably would pay for NotebookLM, and get 2 TB storage on top of that, that's telling something from the user of the early Google years, of more than 20 years. [1] Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI” (1039 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322 [2] List of Google products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

mastazi 1y ago
I've watched a video about NotebookLM podcast generation functionality, and I thought it was impressive. While I realize that it definitely doesn't replace actual podcasts, I immediately thought of many novel and interesting uses for it. Narration is a powerful tool and IME ingesting sources in a narrative form helps my brain to better internalize information.
- teleforce 1y ago
  Yep the podcast looks very intuitive, surreal and nifty at the same time. It's interactive thus you can interrupt the session to get the response dynamically and immediately from the virtual panel and host.

dang 1y ago

Recent and related: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945820 - May 2025 (936 comments)

portnoyd 1y ago

Both YC and Google are legalized illusions that obfuscate who benefits from YC and Google Top of the org chart at these businesses should be the actual target, not the paper trail they set up to protect them.

jonbehr808 1y ago

Kudos to Garry Tan for not only recognizing Google’s long-running manipulation of the search landscape, but for taking principled action in this pivotal case. It’s rare to see a tech leader willing to both speak truth to power and back it up with decisive legal support—thank you.