The United States vs Google

Eh - the article shows that they (and the state of Texas) have very little understanding of how online advertising works. Publishers use things like header bidding, etc. to ask for various bids across the different exchanges before committing which SSP to deliver their ads to. The optimizations happens a few levels down and is more about optimizing effectiveness of the ad that does get shown.

Yes, I think the much more serious allegation in this is the deals with Facebook that could be considered collusion.

What I’m curious about is what on earth was Facebook advertising to the tune of $500 million+?

Facebook? I see plenty of google ads to join it.

Bloomberg reporting DOJ will file a suit this week over Google’s control of the ad market.

It’s on like Donkey Kong

Well be interesting to see how it pans out. The courts dismissed the cases against Google from Texas last year. It will be interesting to see if the feds have a better grasp of the technology and can make a coherent case, as Texas was not able to.

…claims that it’s been “forcing” other companies to use its tools

I feel like this is definitely true, right? Google is still the front page of the internet, and if you don’t take out ads against yourself, anybody else can grab the top result for the name of your business. Competitors, malware, anybody who gives Google some money.

They forgot AltaVista!

I’m fighting the good fight by using Bing!

TIL there are search engines called Baidu and Ecosia.

Baidu is the one in China, if I’m not mistaken. I would have to google what Ecosia is but the irony would be too much.

I use DuckDuckGo when the mood hits me. I don’t think we’re putting a dent in the masses though. I did think Microsoft’s want for ChatGPT for the Bing group sounded interesting. A more evolved search engine with AI would really start to be a key difference if someone does it.

It’s a German “powered by Bing” search engine which makes some nice claims about protecting privacy and being carbon negative. Don’t know too much about them, however.

But It’s Not Google!

That does sound like a great idea @Skipper.

That’s not what this case is about, as far as I can tell. Instead it is about display advertising on 3rd party sites. I.e. when New York Times wants to show ads, and contact a bunch of ad brokers to get the most profitable ad to show for this specific viewer.

All the discussion about the search engine is just a red herring.

In theory running an ad network should not be a particularly great business, and it is a small and shrinking portion of Google’s revenue (10% or so). I guess we’ll see some numbers if/when this goes to court, but personally I’d be surprised if it turns out to be a huge money maker or if Google’s cut is much larger than what the competing ad networks charge.

Per the CMA investigation a couple years back:

CMA intermediation

Google’s search engine dominance is mostly a matter of having a better product, but that arguments about advertisements seems like something that could stick.

Based on the wording I believe the lawsuit is focused on the publisher business as previously speculated. As someone who worked in this space for years I can say that Google’s been prepping for this fight for years and will likely be ok with spinning that business out depending on what happens.