Fabled startup investor and accelerator Y Combinator has some choice words for Google in an amicus brief it just submitted in the U.S.’s monopoly case against the search giant.
In the brief, YC charged that Google is a “monopolist” that has “stunted” the U.S. startup ecosystem by making VC firms like itself hesitate to fund web search and AI startups in what it calls a “kill zone” around Google.
“Google has chilled independent firms like YC from funding and accelerating innovative startups that could otherwise have challenged Google’s dominance,” YC wrote in the filing. “The result is a landscape that has been artificially stunted and stagnant.”
YC’s brief says it’s currently seeking to fund startups developing question-based and agentic AI tools that could transform how people interact with information on the internet. But YC says there’s a “clear risk” that Google will use its monopoly power to slow down the future of those markets.
“Google has effectively frozen the web search and text advertising markets for over a decade,” YC wrote.
The brief, filed May 9, was spotted on X by VC Sheel Mohnot, the general partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures and a prolific social media poster.
But YC isn’t calling for an immediate breakup of Google, as its CEO Garry Tan made clear in a reply to Mohnot.
Rather, YC is arguing Google should curb practices it considers anti-competitive, like paying Apple billions of dollars to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. 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.
For perspective, Google’s search algorithms have been its highly prized secret since its inception. For YC to ask the government to force Google to open it up to competitive LLMs is almost like demanding the government make Microsoft Windows open source, or forcing Amazon to freely deliver packages for competitors.
If Google doesn’t implement such changes within a five-year time frame, then YC advocates for the government to force Google to divest or spin out parts of itself. YC CEO Tan …