U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

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I think it’s worth saying for people not too familiar with the space that this is specifically about Display and Video ads on third party websites. The lawsuit is about how Google managed to get in the entire stack (publisher, exchange and (less importantly for the lawsuit) buy side) and (according to the plaintiffs) abused their positions.<p>I’d really encourage people read the lawsuit. It’s long, but most of the reporting on it seems to be way too superficial and leads to people saying things like “they should split YouTube and Google search”, which really has nothing to do with the complaint…

I&#x27;m guessing the worst case is they are forced to sell off the exchange side of the Ads business, which isn&#x27;t that much revenue compared to the revenue they make selling ad space.<p>This is probably going to have a lot less effect than what people are assuming it will have.<p>Google and Facebook have never had more competition in the Ad space. Apple and Amazon are building big Ad businesses fast. That&#x27;s not the problem. The problem is they play both sides of the market and they dominate both sides of the market. Therefore they have a lot of pricing power.<p>This isn&#x27;t the reason they are making 100s of billions a year. The reason they are making that amount is because they are the best at what they do and you can&#x27;t find the service they provide any where else except Facebook and Google.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;vJYU2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;vJYU2</a><p>I hope something comes of this, but other than a change in administration, what&#x27;s new on this in the last decade? Hasn&#x27;t Google essentially controlled most of online advertising for eons? In fact, perhaps more recently Facebook&#x2F;Meta has chipped into that market more than how things were 8-10 years ago.<p>I was part of an acquisition that Google made in the ad-tech industry back in 2011 and there was a months long DOJ investigation before approving the purchase. The conclusion was it would not harm competition. Within less than two years our product was eliminated or folded into Google&#x27;s and the staff scattered to the wind (inside and outside Google), and our customers became Google&#x27;s customers. They&#x27;ve been doing this forever, back to DoubleClick, etc.<p>Is this timing connected in any way with layoff announcements? Or a general push by the Biden admin generally?<p>Not American, so not as informed about the ins and outs, and genuinely curious.

Will likely result in some sum of x millions in fines. This will make zero difference in Google&#x27;s control over search and anything related. We all seen this movie multiple times and end is always the same..

Google 2021 revenue: $258B Meta 2021 revenue: $118B<p>Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?

Ah, great! Maybe this will finally break up Google&#x27;s monopoly and make ads cheaper and affordable to everyone who wants to run them.

As a consumer, I&#x27;m wondering if it would be better for me if ads were more or less expensive. Maybe more expensive would be better? Would it be good if they were taxed, or there were minimum prices that websites could charge advertisers?<p>Also, is Google&#x27;s ad tech or third-party ad tech better from a privacy point of view? A lot of people distrust Google, but why would they trust no-name third-party ad tech any more? Are there any online advertising companies that have a better track record on privacy?<p>It seems the anti-trust framework doesn&#x27;t map very well to consumer concerns about advertising.

When you&#x27;re building campuses that resemble theme parks more than offices I think it&#x27;s time to let the FTC take a peak. Meta is in a similar position IMO.

One of the conservative&#x27;s legal project over the past 50 years main goals has been to maintain a Borkian consumer harm standard for anti-trust. With the current SCOTUS, I don&#x27;t see much of a realistic path for this.

I&#x27;m kind of sour on antitrust as much of a solution for today&#x27;s issues. If we had five smaller Googles doing the same thing what would that make better?

I&#x27;m less concerned about Google Ad market share and more concerned with their placement of Google properties above competitors on the search results page (IE, Google Reviews over Yelp, or airline prices, etc).

Google never coerced anyone into buying their ads ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯

Almost like allowing them to buy their only actual competitor had exactly the outcome anyone with half a brain cell could have predicted.

If we get the price of advertising down, we can have twice as much to keep revenue flat. Then we can take the money and use it for dividends instead of services like gmail and because that&#x27;s how competitive businesses have to operate. This world will be much better than having a benign monopolist &#x2F;s

Sounds like a strategic way for Google to exit a business they aren&#x27;t making much money on without spooking investors with fresh revenue concerns as AI ramps up as a potential replacement.<p>Not that it will. I&#x27;ll die before I let AI be used for advertising.

Ah yes, another case that will likely just end in a $xxxM fine.

I was neutral on google, they seem to be very low key, so they fly under the radar.<p>Then I started to see their little ads tricks and the story on how they &quot;acquired&quot; google maps aka terra vision and yes , wouldnt put it beyond them to use every trick in the book they can get away with.

It&#x27;s pretty irritating that in the presence of clear collusion and abuse inflicted upon general consumers of things like eggs and motor fuels and insulin, the administration spends its limited enforcement capacity this way.

Don’t fall or people will stomp on you.

Did the judiciary just wake up from a coma?

&#x27;Abusing&#x27;, huh? As though we can expect to see <i>benign</i> monopolies as a norm. Bizarre turn of phrase.

Is this perhaps why Google has yet to respond to ChatGPT with their own version yet? In order for &quot;competition&quot; to be demonstrated as evidence against monopoly claims.<p>Similar to Google paying Mozilla Firefox $400m+ per year or otherwise Chrome would be the only dominant browser on the market and scrutinized much more.