DOJ Sues Google

I can’t wait for the court proceedings to start up again and we get a verdict.

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It’s worth mentioning that Google lost the antitrust case against Epic Games regarding Google Play on Android, with remedies to come in a few months. Microsoft is one of the companies that wants to start its own app store on Android and iOS this year, so they’ve been looking forward to this.

This is going to be an interesting year for Google. And Apple too, hopefully, with whatever happens with the Digital Markets Act.

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busy year for the folks in the google law depts

  • ad tech case in a Virginia federal court in September
  • Texas and other states have a case also focused on the advertising business in March
  • a return to federal court in DC in May for closing arguments on the general search monopoly case
  • December; jury trial verdict against Google in favor of Epic, which the company is still appealing

all this grabbed from This Week In Google Antitrust newsletter

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Return of the $2 Trillion Secret Trial Against Google

We are back this week with closing arguments etc. more detail here: Return of the $2 Trillion Secret Trial Against Google

For a tl;dr, one of the fascinating aspects of this is:

the Court is providing a remote audio access line, and I’ll update this article as soon as that access line is posted to the public docket.

The full timings are down the bottom of that piece :smile: I’ll be listening and following for sure!

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A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation

In September, a federal trial is scheduled to begin in Virginia over the Justice Department’s allegations that Google’s advertising technology constitutes an illegal monopoly.

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More on the story from Big Tech on Trial / Matt Stoller

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A lot depends on the next phase, the remedy phase, of the trial. Will Google get just a slap on the wrist or will the court take serious action against Google?

One thing in the court’s spotlight, is the whole idea of Google being the paid default search, both for Apple and for other platforms. Breaking this up changes the search landscape. I’m betting other search engines are/will be wargaming the different scenarios.

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It will be interesting to see what they think the remedy is. Some random thoughts on maybe nice things:

  • API/firehose access to what Googlebot can see, supplied at cost. Reddit et al, and larger sites that generally don’t allow other user agents to crawl a site in large volumes in a short time can be accessed by other engines.
  • Similar to above, sites that have a ‘whitelist only’ approach to bots generally only allowing Bing/G would be visible to other engines.
  • Periodical backlink graph
  • Allowing other engines to display Google ads, maybe on a CPA model to circumvent click fraud so other engines can achieve the kind of CPM that G does on their searches due to their critical mass of advertisers
  • More extreme on the above, totally separate G’s advertisement model with the rest of their search engine.
  • Exposing some on/off page metrics that allow other ranking methods/engines to compete based on the scale of Google’s data
  • Share query click through metrics with other engines for anything that has any reasonable volume
  • Penalising G revenue based on ‘search engine default’ deals
  • Giving a block grant to browsers so they don’t have a conflict of interest and default to G.

Lots of possibilities.

Google’s not the messiah, and they’ve been a very naughty boy :slight_smile:

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There have been plenty of naive takes on what the remedies should be in the US vs Google case on saerch and search advertising. But this one is worth sharing and reading; from Mt Antitrust himself Tim Wu: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/google-antitrust-remedy.html

The piece is short but paywalled. In summary he proposes:

  1. Force Google to divest from its web browser, Chrome, and the Android operating system for mobile devices.

  2. Force Google, which has provided access to some of its A.I. language models, to grant anyone free and open access to all of its A.I. technologies, as well as the vast troves of data on which those technologies are trained.

Search advertising. will be covered in the US vs Google antitrust trial on adtech which starts on Sept 9th.

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un-paywalled article

i’m skeptical - this same scenario took place with the oil industry and the breakup resulted in more profits for the Rockefeller’s - they got exactly what they wanted

money=greed
greed=corruption

welcome to Earth - possibly the only inhabited planet in the cosmos where you have to pay to live on it

The first two points from Tim Wu are fine but they don’t really address the Apple problem as browser, Chrome and Android have little direct effect on Google’s exclusive search agreement with Apple.

So I would add a third remedy: negate and forbid Google from agreements with other companies (Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, the telecoms) to use Google search. They abused it and should be barred. With Apple’s smartphone marketshare in the US this is really important.

This week the framework for remedies in the US vs Google search case have been published; I’ll report about this in a follow-on post.

Before that I will mention that initial arguments in the US vs Google adtech monopoly case ended recently.

For a great write-up on the adtech case & excellent explainer of the adtech jargon-jungle, I recommend this from Bloomberg (though it is paywalled)


Relating to the image above, and from the article, DoJ estimates:

  1. Google’s ad server controls 87% of the US market and 91% of the market globally.

  2. Google’s ad exchange controls 47% of the US market and 56% globally.

  3. Google’s network, Google Ads, controls 88% of the US market and 87% globally.

Website publishers use an ad server to manage space available for sale. The ad server acts as the brain for the website, keeping track of the minimum bids a publisher is willing to accept, what has been sold and for how much. The Justice Department estimates that Google’s ad server controls 87% of the US market and 91% of the market globally.

Ad exchanges control the auctions that match website publishers with advertisers. Google operates the largest exchange, known as AdX, later rebranded as Google Ad Manager. The Justice Department estimates that Google’s ad exchange controls 47% of the US market and 56% globally. Other popular ad exchanges include Pubmatic Inc., Index Exchange, and Magnite Inc.

Sophisticated advertisers use software known as a demand-side platform to manage their ads and help determine which ad exchanges to bid on and for how much. Google operates a demand-side platform that can bid on an ad exchange.

Advertisers also use ad networks, which take over most of the decision-making process like where to place ads and what to bid, and are most often used by smaller companies. The Justice Department alleges that Google’s network, Google Ads, controls 88% of the US market and 87% globally.

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Now on the US vs Google search case. The proposed framework for remedies was published earlier this week here. Below I give me own if rather long summary. As you will see the range of remedies on the table are wide and might be deep. Notably Chrome and/or Android separation is on the cards.

As a reminder the court found Google liable under Section 2 of the Sherman Act
for maintaining monopolies in U.S. general search services and U.S. general search text
advertising.

(1) search distribution and revenue sharing

  • address control of distribution today but also tomorrow
  • limit or end Google’s use of:
    • contracts
    • monopoly profits
    • other tools to control or influence longstanding and emerging distribution channels and,
    • search-related products e.g
      • browsers
      • search apps
      • artificial intelligence summaries and agents
    • limit or prohibit default agreements, preinstallation agreements, and other
  • revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products, potentially with or without the use of a choice screen.
  • behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features—including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence—over rivals or new entrants.

(2) generation and display of search results

  • requiring, among other things, Google to make available, in whole or through an API
    • the indexes, data, feeds, and models used for Google search, including// those used in AI-assisted search features,
  • Google search results, features, and ads, including the underlying ranking signals, especially on mobile.

(3) advertising scale and monetization

  • remedies that would involve licensing or syndication of Google’s ad feed independent of its search results.

(4) accumulation and use of data.

  • that would prohibit Google from using or retaining data that cannot be effectively shared with others on the basis of privacy concerns
  • that would reduce the cost and complexity of indexing or retaining data for rival general search engines.
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Is there something you read that seemed like it would improve the day-to-day operations for publishers, or some way Mojeek would participate in the ad market that doesn’t make sense today?

now it’s unpaywalled…

Google Allegedly Monopolized Ad Technology Market, DOJ Says at Antitrust Trial - Bloomberg

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Good summary as usual from Matt Stoller: