OpenAI has formally requested that British competition authorities compel Google to include ChatGPT as a selectable default search option on the search choice screens that Google is required to offer users in the UK. The submission, made to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), argues that Google’s current choice screen implementation excludes AI-powered search alternatives, effectively preserving the company’s search monopoly even as the market shifts toward conversational AI interfaces.
Google’s search choice screens were introduced as a remedy following competition enforcement actions in the European Union and subsequently adopted in the UK. The screens present users with a selection of alternative search engines when setting up a new device or browser, allowing them to choose a default other than Google Search. Currently, the options include traditional search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia — but not AI-first search products like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude.
OpenAI’s argument centers on market definition. The company contends that search is no longer limited to traditional web index-based engines and that AI assistants capable of answering questions, summarizing information, and completing research tasks compete directly with Google Search for user attention and advertising-adjacent revenue. Excluding them from choice screens, OpenAI argues, artificially segments the market in Google’s favor by treating AI search as a separate category that doesn’t warrant inclusion.
The CMA has not yet responded publicly to OpenAI’s submission. Google is likely to argue that ChatGPT is not a search engine in the traditional sense — it doesn’t maintain a web index, doesn’t serve web results with source links in the same format, and doesn’t operate on an advertising model. These distinctions are technically accurate but increasingly irrelevant to user behavior: when a user asks ChatGPT a question instead of Googling it, the competitive impact on Google’s search traffic is identical regardless of the underlying architecture.
The submission represents OpenAI’s first direct regulatory offensive against Google’s search dominance. Rather than competing purely on product quality, OpenAI is using competition law to argue for distribution access — the same strategy that Microsoft employed when it lobbied for browser choice screens in the 1990s antitrust settlement. If the CMA accepts OpenAI’s framing, it could establish a precedent that AI assistants are search competitors entitled to the same distribution remedies as traditional search engines, fundamentally expanding the scope of search competition enforcement across Europe.
