Fabled startup investor and accelerator Y Combinator has some selection phrases for Google in an amicus temporary it simply submitted within the U.S.’s monopoly case towards the search large.

Within the brief, YC charged that Google is a “monopolist” that has “stunted” the U.S. startup ecosystem by making VC corporations like itself hesitate to fund net search and AI startups in what it calls a “kill zone” round Google.

“Google has chilled unbiased corporations like YC from funding and accelerating modern startups that might in any other case have challenged Google’s dominance,” YC wrote within the submitting. “The result’s a panorama that has been artificially stunted and stagnant.”

YC’s temporary says it’s at present looking for to fund startups growing question-based and agentic AI instruments that might remodel how folks work together with info on the web. However YC says there’s a “clear threat” that Google will use its monopoly energy to decelerate the way forward for these markets. 

“Google has successfully frozen the net search and textual content promoting markets for over a decade,” YC wrote.

The temporary, filed Could 9, was spotted on X by VC Sheel Mohnot, the final accomplice of Higher Tomorrow Ventures and a prolific social media poster.

However YC isn’t calling for an instantaneous breakup of Google, as its CEO Garry Tan made clear in a reply to Mohnot.

Relatively, YC is arguing Google ought to curb practices it considers anti-competitive, like paying Apple billions of {dollars} to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. It additionally needs Google to do issues it argues would assist startups, like opening up Google’s search index so others can prepare LLMs on it.

For perspective, Google’s search algorithms have been its extremely prized secret since its inception. For YC to ask the federal government to drive Google to open it as much as aggressive LLMs is nearly like demanding the federal government make Microsoft Home windows open supply, or forcing Amazon to freely ship packages for opponents.

If Google doesn’t implement such adjustments inside a 5 yr timeframe, then YC advocates for the federal government to drive Google to divest or spin out elements of itself. YC CEO Tan characterized this concept in an X submit as a “spinoff hammer” risk. He additionally posted that “we love Google” however needs “little tech” to succeed, too, in a separate X thread.

To recap, final yr Google lost a massive antitrust case over its dominance of the search market. Whereas Google appeals the choice, the U.S. authorities is mulling potential punishments (‘cures’) that Google is perhaps required to implement, such as spinning off Chrome. These cures are anticipated to be delivered by August 2025.

YC’s stance could come as a shock to those that have adopted its newest partnerships with Google: most notably, Google Cloud gave YC startups access to a dedicated cluster of Nvidia GPUs final yr. Google co-founder Larry Web page additionally made a rare in-person appearance to talk at a YC occasion in December. 

Google has also acquired at the least two YC-backed startups: Flutter in 2014, and Fridge in 2011. It additionally invested in YC startup Infisical via its Gradient fund in 2023. 

Nonetheless, YC can also be intently tied to OpenAI, which is now directly competing against Google on search. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman used to run YC, whereas OpenAI was the primary group affiliated with YC Analysis. 

That’s one thing Mohnot pointed to on X, writing that the most important beneficiary of YC’s proposed cures, by far, could be OpenAI, slightly than YC’s famously early stage startups, whereas commenting that the amicus temporary “paints Google as extra highly effective than it’s.”

TechCrunch requested YC how it will reply to this critique, and whether or not it has any particular examples of areas that it most likely would have funded had it not been for Google. Up to now, YC hasn’t responded to our remark request. 

Google didn’t reply to a request for remark about YC’s amicus temporary, both. Nonetheless, it argued in a weblog submit final yr that the DOJ’s proposals are “radical and sweeping” and would damage customers, enterprise, and builders.