States leaning toward push to break up Google’s ad tech business

[ichthyous]

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Has anyone else seen this?: "States are leaning toward a push to break up Google’s ad tech business"
[cnbc.com...]

I've never heard of ALL FIFTY attorneys general AND the federal government investigating one company. They are all leaning toward breaking up Google's ad business and may combine forces. If you add in the EU investigations it's not looking good for GOOG. The problem is these investigations simply look at Google's ad business, no mention of manipulation of the organic SERPS. Or perhaps manipulating the organic search traffic is considered part of Google's M.O. to improve ad revenue? After all, there's no better way to force small businesses to pay you for ads than by destroying their organic traffic entirely.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:43 am (utc) on Jun 7, 2020]
[edit reason] cleanup after split to new thread [/edit]

[christianz]

If Google is broken up into multiple parts, they can still coordinate and effectively act as monopoly. You can even argue that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, PayPal etc. are already acting as cartel and making arbitrary decisions on censorship and other matters.

Ideally there would have to be European search engine or even better - Chinese one. I know China is supposedly most intrusive and heaviest censor / manipulator, but USA is not far behind, they just still have this image of being democratic and free market, which is absolutely laughable, of course, if your mental age and aptitude in geopolitics and finance is higher than that of average 10 year old.

Having two different and truly competing censors and manipulators (Google and Baidu with 50/50 global market share) compete in global marketplace of information discovery would be amazing win for independent publishers like us. But its a pipe dream of course.

[Dooku]

Don't get your hopes up, nothing will change, especially because it's a US company within the US:
[tradingeconomics.com...]

In the EU we always laugh and make jokes about the corruption in Italy. But in reality the US is much more corrupt and it's no coincidence that so many (former) dictators, warlords and other corrupt politicians have parked their money in all kinds of trusts and "companies" in the US. Some would even argue that the rank in the above link is painting a too good picture and that the correct rank for the US is somewhere around #80.

[tangor]

The report on the 50 AGs on the ad business occurred eariler, but I can't locate it at the moment.

HGWEVER, there are 13 US AGs looking at g's manipulated and monolithic search business.

Four AGs and the DOJ are looking at big tech censorship and Section 230 protections.

Of the three above, the last one is the one that has the greatest opportunity to affect change in big tech operations.

[tangor]

Left out investigations by the FTC, FEC and DOJ into election interference. These are IMMEDIATE---and may have significant impact as well.

[ichthyous]

@Dooku When fifty attorneys general and the federal government all join together then something is going to change. The question is, will Google get away with a slap on the wrist or will they really break up the ad business? Something will happen, but tech companies are much more nimble and have more firepower than the state and federal governments.

In any case, breaking up Google's ad business is not what concerns most of us in this forum...that is simply a price action. Stopping Google from manipulating its own search results on a platform it created and controls 100% is another matter....that will be much harder.

[heisje]

Progress is slow, but such initiatives would be unthinkable only a few years ago. Unfortunately, results for many of us here will probably come too late. Ten years, plus.

.