The starting investor and accelerator Y Combinator has some Google choice words in an amicus summary that just filed in the US monopolous issue against the search giant.
In summary, YC charged that Google is a “monopoly” that has “stunned” the US start -up ecosystem by making VC firms as they themselves are reluctant to finance online search and beginnings in what it calls the “killing area” around Google.
“Google has cooled independent firms like YC from financing and accelerating innovative beginnings that could otherwise have challenged Google’s dominance,” YC wrote in the file. “The result is a landscape that has been artificially stunned and stagnant.”
The YC cut says it is currently seeking to finance the beginnings of the development of the tools based on questions and agents that can transform the way people interact with information online. But YC says there is a “clear risk” that Google will use its monopolial power to slow down the future of those markets.
“Google has effectively frozen search markets and online text markets for more than a decade,” YC wrote.
The abbreviation, presented on May 9, was noted in X by VC Sheel Mohnot, General Partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures and a fruitful social media poster.
But YC is not calling for an immediate Google split, as its CEO Garry Tan made it clear in a response to Mohnot.
On the contrary, YC is arguing that Google must curb the practices it considers anti-competitive, such as paying billions of dollars Apple to make Google the iPhone’s predetermined search engine. He also wants Google to do things he argues for helping beginnings, like opening the Google search index so that others can train LLM in it.
For perspective, Google’s search algorithms have been its very precious secret since its inception. For the YC to ask the government to force Google to open it into competitive LLM is almost like asking the government to make Microsoft Windows open source, or forcing Amazon to freely offer packages to competitors.
If Google does not apply such changes within a five-year time limit, then YC protects the government to force Google to divert or rotate parts of itself. The Director General of YC Tan characterized this idea in a post x as a “Hammer Spinoff” threat. He also posted it “we love Google” but wants “Little Tech” to succeed, also, in a special X.
To recover, last year Google lost a massive antitrust case over the predominance of the search market. While Google appeals to the decision, the US government is cheating possible penalties (“legal remedies”) that Google may be required to apply, such as the Chrome rotation. These remedies are expected to be submitted by August 2025.
YC’s attitude may come as a surprise to those who have followed its latest partnerships with Google: Mostly, Google Cloud gave YC access to a dedicated group of Nvidia GPUs last year. Google co -founder Larry Page also made a rare appearance within people to talk at a YC event in December.
Google has also won at least two YC -backed startups: Flutter in 2014, and refrigerator in 2011. He also invested at the start of YC Infisical through his gradient fund in 2023.
However, YC is also closely related to Openai, who is now running directly against Google in search. Openai General Director Sam Altman used to run YC, while Openai was the first group associated with YC Research.
This is something that Mohnot stated on X, writing that the largest beneficiary of YC proposed remedies would be Openai, rather than the famous beginnings of the early YC phase, while commenting that Brief Amicus “paints Google as more powerful than it is.”
Techcrunch asked the YC how it would respond to this criticism, and if there are any specific example of the fields it would probably have funded if it were not for Google. So far, YC has not responded to our comment request.
Google did not respond to a comment request about YC’s brief amicus, as. However, he argued in a blog post last year that the Proposals of DOJ are “radical and inclusive” and will harm customers, business and developers.
