ChatGPT and other technology innovations may have been released years ago if Google hadn’t monopolized the search market, the Justice Department told a federal court Thursday.

Days after Microsoft Corp. announced that it would incorporate OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology into its Bing search engine, Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it would release its own conversational AI product, said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department’s lead lawyer in its antitrust case against the search giant.

That “shows what real competition will do,” Dintzer told Judge Amit Mehta. “What has been going on for the past 12 years is Google has been maintaining its monopoly. Would we have seen ChatGPT six years earlier? Would we see five other competitors competing for search? Those are questions none of us can answer.”