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

by mastazi on 5/13/25, 9:57 PM with 42 comments

• by dang on 5/14/25, 1:00 AM

  Recent and related:

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

• by benoau on 5/13/25, 10:47 PM

  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.

• by teleforce on 5/14/25, 12:51 AM

  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

  [2] List of Google products:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

• by arealaccount on 5/13/25, 10:23 PM

  > 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

• by mountainriver on 5/13/25, 11:16 PM

  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

• by cadamsdotcom on 5/13/25, 10:56 PM

  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.

• by dpiers on 5/13/25, 11:58 PM

  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.

• by jonbehr808 on 5/15/25, 6:11 AM

  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.

• by portnoyd on 5/14/25, 1:54 AM

  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.

• by mortsnort on 5/13/25, 11:34 PM

  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.

• by nand_gate on 5/13/25, 11:15 PM

  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.

• by WorldPeas on 5/13/25, 10:54 PM

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