Something I really don't get is the part about Google's monopoly in search text ads. FTA:
> Finally, the filing said Google’s dominance over search text ads needed to be addressed by lowering barriers to would-be rivals or licensing its ad feed to others, independently from search results.
What Google has is a monopoly on search (which is bad), but I don't think having a monopoly for advertising on your own property is a bad thing. If anything, from a privacy perspective, I'd rather that only one party (the publisher, in this case Google) gets to see my searches, rather than the publisher and an ecosystem of low-scrupules ad platforms.
For sure I might be biased as I used to work on Google Ads, but I also know quite a bit about how the sausage is made and how the industry is. That being said, I really don't see how "licensing the ad feed" would do any good for end users.
> What Google has is a monopoly on search (which is bad), but I don't think having a monopoly for advertising on your own property is a bad thing.
Where one might run afoul is using your monopoly in one market -- search, in Google's case -- to gain an advantage in another market -- advertising. It's kinda interesting because they clearly don't treat "search" as a market given they don't sell it to anyone but it also clearly has value, otherwise people wouldn't use it.
Now I wonder if it is without precedent that the supposedly-monopolistic thing they're using as a carrot for their advantage in a different market doesn't actually generate revenue itself; not sure if that context has ever been tried in court.
The argument that I see that could be made (which is different from what the judge said here) is that Google used their monopoly in search to gain an unfair advantage in Network Ads. I could totally see forcing Google to spin-off their external ad network, but at the same time, these ads sucks and are getting worse CPM wise.
There is another ongoing case regarding Google's Ad business (concerning Display Ads and more specifically the ad auctions) which seems pretty strong. But again, it's not about preventing Google from owning the ad platform for their own properties.
Preventing companies from owning the advertising platform for their own properties is a pretty terrible idea (got an idea for a new ad format that no network supports? Tough luck!). But, preventing a player with a monopoly in one sector from having an ad platform for other players, that's sensible.
> It's kinda interesting because they clearly don't treat "search" as a market given they don't sell it to anyone but it also clearly has value, otherwise people wouldn't use it.
They sell access to their search API, even to competitors.
> Finally, the filing said Google’s dominance over search text ads needed to be addressed by lowering barriers to would-be rivals or licensing its ad feed to others, independently from search results.
What Google has is a monopoly on search (which is bad), but I don't think having a monopoly for advertising on your own property is a bad thing. If anything, from a privacy perspective, I'd rather that only one party (the publisher, in this case Google) gets to see my searches, rather than the publisher and an ecosystem of low-scrupules ad platforms.
For sure I might be biased as I used to work on Google Ads, but I also know quite a bit about how the sausage is made and how the industry is. That being said, I really don't see how "licensing the ad feed" would do any good for end users.