Motorola’s latest smartphones are about to become the digital Noah’s Ark of artificial intelligence assistants, featuring a pre-installed menagerie of apps from not just the monolithic Google, but also Microsoft’s Copilot and the upstart Perplexity AI. This isn’t a random act of corporate generosity, mind you—the move emerges as a central spectacle in the boiling antitrust arena where Google’s courtroom stardom is, for once, more about defending old habits than innovating new tech. As usual, nothing in the tech world is coincidental, least of all when it’s tied to billion-dollar court cases and the Department of Justice’s undying quest to make monopolies interesting again.
For IT professionals and the gadget-loving crowd, Google’s latest antitrust saga has been something of a techy reality show—full of testimony, strategic leaks, and the sort of “oh, really?” revelations that make you rethink your phone’s home screen. The core of this trial? The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Google has spent years cementing its dominance by generously incentivizing device manufacturers to feature its search engine—and, more recently, its AI offerings—by default.
Enter the testimony of Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s Vice President of Platforms and Device Partnerships, whose day in court was more newsworthy than most product launches. Fitzgerald asserted that Motorola’s forthcoming handsets wouldn’t be locked into Google’s walled garden of Gemini AI. Instead, consumers will be greeted by a fairer fight: AI from Google, Copilot from Microsoft, and that plucky newcomer, Perplexity AI, all pre-installed and ready to duel for your queries.
Here’s where the plot thickens: this open approach directly counters persistent accusations that Google’s dominance is perpetuated not by technical brilliance alone, but by exclusive contracts and locked-down defaults. Now, Motorola’s cross-aisle approach could either be a harbinger of freer markets or a bit of savvy legal posturing—the latter made more likely as Google conveniently clarified its non-exclusivity to partners right before the trial opened. Timing, as they say in comedy (and litigation), is everything.
From an IT pro’s perspective, a growing array of pre-installed AI options could quickly devolve into digital clutter. Consider your average user, already fatigued by a barrage of one-tap assistants all shouting for their attention—Siri, Bixby (rest her soul), Alexa, and now a fresh round of AI-native apps that promise to do everything but make the morning coffee. Choice is great until every home screen looks like a poorly managed debate club. It’s a circus you never asked to attend.
Yet there’s a silver lining: greater competition means features will (in theory) get better, security might tighten, and—dare we hope—pricing for premium AI services could actually remain tethered to reality. Or, you know, we’ll just get more pop-ups.
This is akin to your landlord suddenly allowing pets right after you’ve complained to city hall—and right before the inspector comes knocking. For the legal beagles among us, it lends credence to the DOJ’s theory: Google’s all-encompassing reach isn’t just the result of superior product development, but also decades of aggressive pre-installation deals and those famously “enormous sums” paid to keep competitors off the digital block.
Judge Amit Mehta’s earlier ruling already flagged these deck-stacking tactics, finding in 2024 that Google in fact had illegally monopolized search by buying its way onto nearly every relevant browser and device. The DOJ now seeks not just an end to these practices for search, but for Google’s increasingly expansive AI portfolio as well. Gemini, as it turns out, did not spring forth from the head of Zeus, but from Google’s well-oiled revenue engine.
For IT departments and sysadmins everywhere, the bigger question isn’t which AI gets preinstalled, but who controls the default settings in an enterprise deployment. Imagine having to add “un-preinstall” to your onboarding checklist, all while reassuring leadership you’re not inadvertently opening the door to sketchy data collection or compliance mishaps. It’s enough to make you pine for the days when bloatware just meant Candy Crush and trial antivirus.
It’s a canny move, though not entirely altruistic. With the smartphone market perpetually squeezed by ever slimmer margins and the shadow of “premium” brands like Apple lurking at the top, manufacturers are desperate for ways to differentiate—preferably ones that don’t involve forcing you to buy a $150 charger next year. Pre-installing the latest and greatest AI apps is, at the very least, good optics.
Still, there’s risk: the more crowded the app roster, the easier it becomes for users to tune out entirely. If everything is an “assistant,” nothing really assists—except perhaps in draining battery life and eating up precious storage. And don’t forget the regulatory headaches: the more third-party software you add, the harder it becomes to guarantee timely updates or manage global privacy compliance. Bless the helpdesk souls who must explain to Grandma Jean why her phone now “talks back” in three dialects.
Yet it would be naive to think this newfound “choice” is entirely organic. Much like how TV bundles give you hundreds of channels but nothing worth watching, smartphone manufacturers may end up pre-installing a parade of AI alternatives while only the most persistent (or most heavily funded) survive the long march to user loyalty.
Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity AI are formidable, but users are famously creatures of habit. If Google’s AI remains quickest, slickest, or merely first-in-line in the UI, real market dynamics may change little. When’s the last time you voluntarily switched your default search, let alone changed out your digital assistant? If you answered anything other than “never, unless I was forced to,” you’re more digitally adventurous than most.
Then there’s the unsettling reality that many “competing” AIs are still deeply dependent on foundational models or data sources controlled by the very incumbents they’re supposed to disrupt. The front-end might be more varied, but the back-end still bears familiar fingerprints.
Let’s not forget the delightfully Kafkaesque process of updating MDM (Mobile Device Management) policies. Each fresh partnership, each new default, increases the complexity of standardizing device fleets. And of course, every additional pre-installed app is another entry on the “Uninstall This First” training slide. Onboarding junior staff to this digital menagerie? Don’t forget the diagram.
From a security perspective, more alternatives theoretically spread risk, but only if those alternatives aren’t just skin-deep. If every assistant essentially feeds the same backend or has handshake agreements with the old guard, your sense of choice might not translate into actual diversity of providers—or, critically, privacy guarantees.
But here’s where the stakes creep upward: as AI becomes the layer through which users organize, understand, and act upon information, whoever controls that interface controls attention, habits, and ultimately market share. A single well-placed “default” can reframe the entire user journey—what starts as a win for competition could, in practice, morph into another battle over default settings buried five taps deep.
Realistically, fewer than 10% of smartphone users actively change their digital assistant. For the 90%—and most IT pros forced to support them—pre-installation comes perilously close to de facto exclusivity. The only thing harder to dislodge than a pre-installed app? The user’s inertia.
The success of Perplexity AI, Microsoft Copilot, and any other upstart depends on both visibility and usability. If these new digital assistants meaningfully differentiate themselves—better language support, privacy promises actually delivered, or smart integrations for the enterprise—they could finally erode Google’s fortress. But if it’s just a clone war, only with slightly different logos, the dominant pattern will persist.
If you’re in enterprise IT, the safest bet is assuming a future where every device update potentially triggers an “AI re-shuffle,” and where “vendor-neutral” policies become as important as BYOD ever was. The best innovation isn’t in adding more apps to the home screen, but in actually giving users real, informed control.
Yet, as with frontier regulation everywhere, noble intentions risk getting outpaced by market reality. By the time the ink dries on today’s legal settlements, AI itself may have already evolved past the scope of today’s strictures. Will paid placements simply morph into “AI feature partnerships”? Will the battleground shift to the next frontier—enterprise APIs, digital wallets, or maybe ambient intelligence baked into your car, fridge, or augmented reality glasses? If there’s one thing more persistent than an incumbent’s market power, it’s the ingenuity of their legal teams.
At the end of the day, is this a revolution in smartphone user empowerment? Or just a slightly better dinner menu in a walled garden? Are we witnessing the dawn of meaningful competition or simply choreographed theatrics staged for judge, jury, and the public relations gods?
Whatever the case, it’s a safe bet that in a few years, your next phone will greet you with more digital assistants than you have friends in your contacts list. Whether any of them can tell you where to find a USB-C charger when you need it most—well, that’s a legal battle for another day.
Welcome to the new age of voice-powered, AI-fueled, regulation-driven choice. Enjoy the paradox—and be sure to check your settings.
Source: Cryptopolitan Google points to Motorola's deals to pre-install Perplexity AI, Microsoft apps as evidence in antitrust case | Cryptopolitan
Snakes in the Smartphone Garden: A Brief Recap of the Antitrust Drama
For IT professionals and the gadget-loving crowd, Google’s latest antitrust saga has been something of a techy reality show—full of testimony, strategic leaks, and the sort of “oh, really?” revelations that make you rethink your phone’s home screen. The core of this trial? The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Google has spent years cementing its dominance by generously incentivizing device manufacturers to feature its search engine—and, more recently, its AI offerings—by default.Enter the testimony of Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s Vice President of Platforms and Device Partnerships, whose day in court was more newsworthy than most product launches. Fitzgerald asserted that Motorola’s forthcoming handsets wouldn’t be locked into Google’s walled garden of Gemini AI. Instead, consumers will be greeted by a fairer fight: AI from Google, Copilot from Microsoft, and that plucky newcomer, Perplexity AI, all pre-installed and ready to duel for your queries.
Here’s where the plot thickens: this open approach directly counters persistent accusations that Google’s dominance is perpetuated not by technical brilliance alone, but by exclusive contracts and locked-down defaults. Now, Motorola’s cross-aisle approach could either be a harbinger of freer markets or a bit of savvy legal posturing—the latter made more likely as Google conveniently clarified its non-exclusivity to partners right before the trial opened. Timing, as they say in comedy (and litigation), is everything.
Life Isn’t Just Google: The Rise of Multiplatform AI
Let’s be real—if you polled a thousand people to name an AI assistant, you’d probably get nine hundred and eighty-nine answers that begin with “G.” But the winds are changing. Perplexity AI, founded in 2022, is making waves with a conversational search assistant that serves direct answers rather than link-littered search results. Microsoft’s Copilot, riding in with Bing’s branding and Microsoft’s signature persistence, offers another alternative. The inclusion of these apps signals an industry slowly but surely moving toward genuine choice—or at least the illusion of it.From an IT pro’s perspective, a growing array of pre-installed AI options could quickly devolve into digital clutter. Consider your average user, already fatigued by a barrage of one-tap assistants all shouting for their attention—Siri, Bixby (rest her soul), Alexa, and now a fresh round of AI-native apps that promise to do everything but make the morning coffee. Choice is great until every home screen looks like a poorly managed debate club. It’s a circus you never asked to attend.
Yet there’s a silver lining: greater competition means features will (in theory) get better, security might tighten, and—dare we hope—pricing for premium AI services could actually remain tethered to reality. Or, you know, we’ll just get more pop-ups.
Google’s Contracts: Monopolistic Reality or Just “Competitive” Business?
One of the more comedic elements in this otherwise serious antitrust spectacle is the sudden flurry of Google’s clarifying memos dispatched to its manufacturing partners. According to Fitzgerald’s testimony, Google’s contracts don’t actually block other assistants from being installed alongside Gemini or Google Search. “See? They’re free to choose!” Google cried, just as the DOJ pointed out this newfound openness only emerged days before the trial commenced.This is akin to your landlord suddenly allowing pets right after you’ve complained to city hall—and right before the inspector comes knocking. For the legal beagles among us, it lends credence to the DOJ’s theory: Google’s all-encompassing reach isn’t just the result of superior product development, but also decades of aggressive pre-installation deals and those famously “enormous sums” paid to keep competitors off the digital block.
Judge Amit Mehta’s earlier ruling already flagged these deck-stacking tactics, finding in 2024 that Google in fact had illegally monopolized search by buying its way onto nearly every relevant browser and device. The DOJ now seeks not just an end to these practices for search, but for Google’s increasingly expansive AI portfolio as well. Gemini, as it turns out, did not spring forth from the head of Zeus, but from Google’s well-oiled revenue engine.
For IT departments and sysadmins everywhere, the bigger question isn’t which AI gets preinstalled, but who controls the default settings in an enterprise deployment. Imagine having to add “un-preinstall” to your onboarding checklist, all while reassuring leadership you’re not inadvertently opening the door to sketchy data collection or compliance mishaps. It’s enough to make you pine for the days when bloatware just meant Candy Crush and trial antivirus.
Motorola, the Middleman: Opportunist or Champion of Choice?
Motorola’s announcement is perfectly timed to both ride the wave of AI hype and present the company as a bold innovator—never mind the practical reality that stuffing extra apps onto your phones is as old as Android itself. The company is set to formally unveil this smorgasbord of assistants at a forthcoming event, but the strategic value is clear: Motorola gets to play “Switzerland,” inviting Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity AI to the table, all while staying on the government’s good side and appealing to users’ desire for flexibility.It’s a canny move, though not entirely altruistic. With the smartphone market perpetually squeezed by ever slimmer margins and the shadow of “premium” brands like Apple lurking at the top, manufacturers are desperate for ways to differentiate—preferably ones that don’t involve forcing you to buy a $150 charger next year. Pre-installing the latest and greatest AI apps is, at the very least, good optics.
Still, there’s risk: the more crowded the app roster, the easier it becomes for users to tune out entirely. If everything is an “assistant,” nothing really assists—except perhaps in draining battery life and eating up precious storage. And don’t forget the regulatory headaches: the more third-party software you add, the harder it becomes to guarantee timely updates or manage global privacy compliance. Bless the helpdesk souls who must explain to Grandma Jean why her phone now “talks back” in three dialects.
AI Arms Race: Who Actually Wins?
Technologists and digital rights hawks find themselves in rare alignment on this one: more visible competition is a step forward, if only because it exposes long-obscured tactics in how our digital experiences are shaped before we even peel the plastic off a new phone.Yet it would be naive to think this newfound “choice” is entirely organic. Much like how TV bundles give you hundreds of channels but nothing worth watching, smartphone manufacturers may end up pre-installing a parade of AI alternatives while only the most persistent (or most heavily funded) survive the long march to user loyalty.
Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity AI are formidable, but users are famously creatures of habit. If Google’s AI remains quickest, slickest, or merely first-in-line in the UI, real market dynamics may change little. When’s the last time you voluntarily switched your default search, let alone changed out your digital assistant? If you answered anything other than “never, unless I was forced to,” you’re more digitally adventurous than most.
Then there’s the unsettling reality that many “competing” AIs are still deeply dependent on foundational models or data sources controlled by the very incumbents they’re supposed to disrupt. The front-end might be more varied, but the back-end still bears familiar fingerprints.
IT Heads’ Dilemma: More AI, More Problems?
Every new AI integration arrives with bold promises—and sometimes even bolder bugs. For organizations that manage fleets of mobile devices, each pre-installed AI assistant represents another privacy policy to review, another permission to manage, another data source to audit. The CISO’s migraine comes not just from theoretical risks, but the practical realities of needing to control which assistant gets an open mic. Are you comfortable with direct conversational queries running through whichever startup lands the next exclusive deal?Let’s not forget the delightfully Kafkaesque process of updating MDM (Mobile Device Management) policies. Each fresh partnership, each new default, increases the complexity of standardizing device fleets. And of course, every additional pre-installed app is another entry on the “Uninstall This First” training slide. Onboarding junior staff to this digital menagerie? Don’t forget the diagram.
From a security perspective, more alternatives theoretically spread risk, but only if those alternatives aren’t just skin-deep. If every assistant essentially feeds the same backend or has handshake agreements with the old guard, your sense of choice might not translate into actual diversity of providers—or, critically, privacy guarantees.
Will Consumers Even Notice?
For the average consumer, the arrival of multiple AI assistants preinstalled on their shiny new Motorola device might merit a brief “oh, what’s this?” before being methodically ignored for the next year. Just as Amazon bundles three music apps onto their Fire devices and you still use Spotify, most users tend to default to what’s most visible and least disruptive.But here’s where the stakes creep upward: as AI becomes the layer through which users organize, understand, and act upon information, whoever controls that interface controls attention, habits, and ultimately market share. A single well-placed “default” can reframe the entire user journey—what starts as a win for competition could, in practice, morph into another battle over default settings buried five taps deep.
Realistically, fewer than 10% of smartphone users actively change their digital assistant. For the 90%—and most IT pros forced to support them—pre-installation comes perilously close to de facto exclusivity. The only thing harder to dislodge than a pre-installed app? The user’s inertia.
Competitive AI: Smoke, Mirrors, or Substance?
The DOJ’s action—and Motorola’s corresponding market moves—are reminiscent of the browser wars of decades past. Then, as now, anti-monopoly pressure forced a nominal expansion of choices, but in practice, usage demographics shifted only after years of glacial change and consumer education (or, more cynically, relentless nagging popups).The success of Perplexity AI, Microsoft Copilot, and any other upstart depends on both visibility and usability. If these new digital assistants meaningfully differentiate themselves—better language support, privacy promises actually delivered, or smart integrations for the enterprise—they could finally erode Google’s fortress. But if it’s just a clone war, only with slightly different logos, the dominant pattern will persist.
If you’re in enterprise IT, the safest bet is assuming a future where every device update potentially triggers an “AI re-shuffle,” and where “vendor-neutral” policies become as important as BYOD ever was. The best innovation isn’t in adding more apps to the home screen, but in actually giving users real, informed control.
Regulatory Waves: What Happens Next?
While the government’s antitrust crusade focuses on the fate of big names, the real impact might be on how device makers, app developers, and, yes, IT buyers navigate an AI-infused hardware ecosystem. The immediate regulatory ask—banning Google from default placement agreements—could set precedent well beyond search. A ban applied to AI assistants would disrupt current business models, triggering a cascade of renegotiations, strategy pivots, and, no doubt, an uptick in industry job postings for “contract lawyers open to travel.”Yet, as with frontier regulation everywhere, noble intentions risk getting outpaced by market reality. By the time the ink dries on today’s legal settlements, AI itself may have already evolved past the scope of today’s strictures. Will paid placements simply morph into “AI feature partnerships”? Will the battleground shift to the next frontier—enterprise APIs, digital wallets, or maybe ambient intelligence baked into your car, fridge, or augmented reality glasses? If there’s one thing more persistent than an incumbent’s market power, it’s the ingenuity of their legal teams.
Final Questions (and a Few Snarky Answers)
For IT pros, tech journalists, and privacy advocates, Motorola’s “three-AI-make-a-crowd” approach is encouraging, if only as a sign that big tech’s old games are finally being aired in court. It’s not the end of the road—maybe not even the beginning of the end—but perhaps the start of a new chapter where consumers, for once, see beneath the surface of preinstalled software.At the end of the day, is this a revolution in smartphone user empowerment? Or just a slightly better dinner menu in a walled garden? Are we witnessing the dawn of meaningful competition or simply choreographed theatrics staged for judge, jury, and the public relations gods?
Whatever the case, it’s a safe bet that in a few years, your next phone will greet you with more digital assistants than you have friends in your contacts list. Whether any of them can tell you where to find a USB-C charger when you need it most—well, that’s a legal battle for another day.
Welcome to the new age of voice-powered, AI-fueled, regulation-driven choice. Enjoy the paradox—and be sure to check your settings.
Source: Cryptopolitan Google points to Motorola's deals to pre-install Perplexity AI, Microsoft apps as evidence in antitrust case | Cryptopolitan
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