A US court reigned in August Google has a search monopoly, and while Google is appealing, the Justice Department is trying to figure out what potential penalties to impose — e.g. hack chrome.

As part of that process, the Justice Department wants to call one particular witness: Dmitry Shevelenko, chief operating officer, according to a recent court filing. Wonderan AI search provider last valued at $9 billion According to Reuters.

Perplexity and other generative AI tools, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT Search, have emerged as a potential alternative to searching the internet because they can deliver direct answers to complex queries (albeit sometimes with made-up or misinformation). Google responded to the threat with its own AI search tools, such as AI Overviews, which provide AI-generated answers on top of search results.

The Department of Justice wants to ask Shevelenko about “generative AI's relationship to Search Access Points, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing.”

“Hospital search” is a term the DOJ uses to describe things like Google Chrome where people go to search the internet.

While the filing doesn't explain exactly why the Justice Department wants to ask Perplexity about these issues, it could help Google's argument that it monopolizes the search business and crowds out potential competitors and thus deserves stronger penalties.

TechCrunch asked Perplexity if it agreed with the executive testifying and his thoughts on the antitrust case. Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did Google.

The confusion is effectively caught in the middle of the dispute, as both parties want to receive information that could help their cases. In October, Google subpoenaed Perplexity for company documents to prove it had valid competition in the search space. (Google also subpoenaed Microsoft and OpenAI.)

However, the technology giant stated that Perplexity had not yet submitted "a single document" to Google as of December 11, and after a two-month wait, it applied to the court, claiming that "there is no reasonable justification for further delay".

Perplexity noted in its filing that Google had already agreed to comply with 12 of the 14 document requests but was "still evaluating the burden of collecting such a large universe of documents."

Perplexity also says that Google agreed to provide copies of licensing agreements “related to AI education,” but that Perplexity wants all the licensing agreements and asked Google to “meet and discuss” about it.