The Justice Department and a group of eight states sued Google on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally abusing a monopoly over the technology that powers online advertising, in the agency’s first antitrust lawsuit against a tech giant under President Biden and an escalation in legal pressure on one of the world’s biggest internet companies.
The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”
More of this, please.
And about damn time!
Good.
So the best case scenario is for Google to open up its ads business and for Microsoft, Apple, Meta and TikTok to offer more ads to their customers? I don’t see on how a (set of) smaller company could ever succeed in such system. And compete. This is hence about some perverse redistribution of ads wealth in between small number of monopolies.
Geck,
Remember that having a monopoly isn’t illegal, they’re just not allowed to interfere with the competition. For better or worse, antitrust makes it such that alternate players won’t be blocked from competing, but it doesn’t automatically redistribute marketshare or guaranty they’ll be competitive.
I think the best case for google is to pull a microsoft and get a slap on the wrist with the monopoly be allowed to continue mostly unencumbered. Google would still have brand name advantages, scales of economy, etc. There is a worse case scenario for google too, though US climate is so distanced from the regulation that broke up ATT that I don’t find this likely at all.
I agree, I mean Microsoft is the logical beneficiary here by proxy of their openAi investment. Google is scared shitless over the tech. Chatbot GPT could do searching much better than google does now. Better searching is what built google’s add business and what they’ve neglected for a long long time.
In general, I think today’s climate in tech does not allow for small companies to grow because of the private equity or VC route that so many of them go. Everyone is looking for an exit, not building the next Google/Apple/Microsoft/Meta/Amazon whatever.
Which raises the question interesting question: How is Google interfering with the competition? “Engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers”? Is this the most specific they can be?
This is a general problem with big tech: Much of their value stems from the ecosystems they create around their products or services, which however can result in unbreakable monopolies (aka insurmountable barriers to entry for competitors) if there is no regulation against proprietary interfaces and abusive DRM practices. However, the law actually protects proprietary interfaces and DRM instead of outlawing them, which means a company cannot be prosecuted for interfering with the competition using proprietary interfaces and DRM.
It’s the reason why the Microsoft anti-trust trial was such a farce. Most of Microsoft’s value lies in the proprietary nature of the win32/win64 API and the various proprietary pieces of DRM around Windows. And in the past, in IE’s proprietary interfaces (including those derives from open technologies via EEE). But they can’t outlaw that, because that would annoy some very rich donors and some very entrenched interests. So, Microsoft was essentially Al Capone’d and was fined on a nonsensical “bundling” charge for bundling IE with Windows (which is quite frankly ridiculous, even the PSP bundles a browser). Really, that’s all they could get them for.
So, expect a similar farce in this trial. Google will probably face a small fine and be forced to put some kind of ballot screen on Android where everyone will click “I want to use Chrome and Google services as default” and that will be it.
kurkosdr,
I agree these are fair points.
I wouldn’t go this far. Antitrust courts can mandate disclosure and prohibit restrictions. For comparison in the 90s microsoft was forced to open the documentation for windows system programming. Before this many of the APIs were only available to developers licensed under microsoft’s MSDN program. I’m not saying this is a prediction for google, only pointing it out as a technically possible outcome for an antitrust case.
Again, this is just a nitpick, but there’s a difference between “they can’t outlaw that” and “that would annoy some very rich donors and some very entrenched interests”. I argue they *can* outlaw the use of proprietary technology to entrench a monopoly. However thanks to corruption and revolving doors connecting government and corporate worlds, there are huge personal consequences for anyone making enemies with powerful corporations. People who don’t play ball jeopardize their career aspirations both inside and outside of government and won’t be able to climb the ranks.
It’s a lot like being a whistle blower at work, even those who’ve done nothing wrong may face consequences for doing so. :-/
I am glad the government is at least focusing on tech monopolies again after decades of letting them slide under the radar. But yeah, it’s way to early to pat anyone on the back for fixing anything. The chances of real significant change remain statistically negligible.
Maybe a monopoly isn’t per se but monopolization is a felony. And good luck proving the mentioned companies are not resulting to monopolization. Like all the time. On why they are allowed to do that. Beats me. Likely somebody feels that is a good idea. Although it might work for a while. On the long run the market tends to correct itself. Like lets say Windows at best stagnating in the past 10 years or so. Rise of TikTok, ChatGPT … You can’t stop the progress. No amount of political assistance in preserving your monopoly can help you with that.
I can’t read the article, it’s a paywall.
Press the “X” button on your browser before the Javascript loads. Or block Javascript entirely for the New York Times site, the site works fine without it. I am always amused by publisher incompetence when it comes to “soft” paywalls (aka paywalls where they momentarily load the article to later hide it with Javascript). If Javascript is so crucial to your “flash of article content before the paywall” trick, then also make the article load using JavaScript. It will still be bypassed, but not as easily.
It’s visible using “reader view” in Firefox.
Load the page, toggle reader view, then reload the page.
Hope that helps.
I am still concerned that not everyone just installs adblockers and continues on woth their day. Remember when we used terms like ‘adware’? The always connected nature of out computers these days make it easy for companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft to just advertise to us constantly. I guess since people are switching to streaming services with no ads, companies have to have reasons to keep their marketing departments…
Smart TV platforms have no way to bypass ads other than downloading some third-party app like Vanced (and most people, including me, like to stick to the official app). Though I personally voluntarily view YouTube ads without skipping (if they aren’t too long) to support the YouTuber.
Also, most people view articles on their phones nowadays, and they probably have their history and bookmarks tied to their Gmail account (aka to Chrome), which means they have to use Chrome for Android or Chrome for iOS, which both don’t do ad-blockers. Fortunately, I prefer to have my phone history and bookmarks separate so I use Brave.
Another problem is ads in apps such as Maps which cannot be avoided without avoiding the app itself or doing some kind of hackery with your phone (which most users won’t).
So, don’t worry, the average user will keep seeing a lot of ads.
So far on the Smart TV front, I just pay for streaming services so I don’t have to see ads (outside of the ones promoting other shows that Amazon likes to do) I use Firefox +ublock everywhere (except an iPad I have, which I use Brave). There are some alternative mapping software that doesn’t display ads, like the open street map apps. But yeah, the average user just keeps on seeing crap… friend of mine was using a flashlight app that had a stupid video that would play every time he opened it… until I showed him how to turn it on with his Note phone…
Tidbit from article:
Harms? Really? Remember when journalists were expected to write correct English? I feel old…
Remember when Journalists had to actually have some skill and therefore had some form of respect? They don’t much anymore…