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EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

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Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#71

Post by Aunche »

jacooper wrote: post #61
Aunche wrote: post #21

>EU is “concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack.” There are plenty of competitors in the ad tech space. China created TikTok. Korea created KaoKaoTalk. Even Japan created Line. Meanwhile, the EU, for all it's antitrust regulation, hasn't created anything substantial. Perhaps, it's the burdensome regulation that's the problem.

Yes, and that's great. They don't want surveillance Capitalism.

One of my friends works for a European adtech company. Unlike the companies I mentioned above, they don't do anything except manage online ads for brands. After iOS and Android enhanced their privacy settings, they lost a substantial portion of their business. I'm guessing that this is the type of business that the EU is trying to protect.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#72

Post by reaperducer »

LatteLazy wrote: post #19

Assiming this happened, and it worked as expected, the result would be: * more ads, as competition drives down prices * worse ads as cheaper adds don't need to be as relevant but do need to be more eye catching / shocking to compete for attention. * less money to pay for the services ad revenue cover, so maybe you have to pay for gmail or get more spam etc People seem to miss that "Competition" is not an ends in itse…

the result would be:

more ads, as competition drives down prices

worse ads as cheaper adds don't need to be as relevant but do need to be more eye catching / shocking to compete for attention.

That's exactly what happened already — because of Google.

Before Google AdSense, web sites used to be able to select high-quality ads from reputable advertising companies. You could get $100+ CPM for some campaigns from TribalFusion.

Then AdSense appeared, and drove CPM rates into pennies, which is why web sites are so loaded with advertising now.

You used to be able to make a good living running a high quality web site that served one ad per page. I know, because I did it for years. Google destroyed all of that. I won't cry if someone else does it to Google.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#73

Post by ornitorrincos »

piaste wrote: post #47
Fyrezerk wrote: post #10

These rulings for a company of Google's stature/importance are always funny to me. How quickly would public opinion change if Google decided to just shut off their service in the EU for a day? Monopolistic breakups that serve the public's best interest are one thing. But how many people actually care that Google might represent a monopoly? Does it actually affect people negatively if the result is a positive online u…

> How quickly would public opinion change if Google decided to just shut off their service in the EU for a day? Very quickly - against Google. The fact that European citizens have critical business ties to Google (from GSuite to YT partners) is a sword that cuts both ways. It means the EU can't simply shut Google down on a whim; but it also means that Google can't just throw a tantrum and put up a black page saying "…

Not to mention why should anyone anywhere trust google at that point.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#74

Post by gmerc »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #22

Google will rather split up the internet by pulling out of Europe than follow this. And isn't ads the only profitable business Google has? If they sell it, there Google search, Gmail etc couldn't exist.

Bullshit. See Facebook in Australia or Hongkong. See every company that went into china anyway. For the EU, google leaving would be a feature.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#76

Post by olau »

nisegami wrote: post #39

As expected, the comments here seem generally in support of such a move. But, it is really unclear to me how such a move would improve my life or the lives of most typical users. Genuinely open to having it explained to me.

Online store sells great products. But nobody knows about them.

Online store buys ads on Google to tell people about their products. People click the ads, and buy the products so the store can scale up and lower their per unit cost. Everyone are happy.

Now fast forward a decade. Google drop their "do no evil" motto and jack up ad prices. Online store now pays 10 times as much for their ads and have to raise prices to cover the costs. Google shareholders are happy, everyone else loses - it doesn't matter if they click ads or not, the prices are higher for everyone.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#77

Post by gumballindie »

And microsoft is walking scot free. They can happily control operating systems, office tools, a slice of search, ides, ads within their os, are allowed to buy large game makers and soon ai. As a bare minimum they should be forced greater compatibility with running their software on linux and ideally be banned from doing ads, ai and gamedev.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#78

Post by anhner »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #22

Google will rather split up the internet by pulling out of Europe than follow this. And isn't ads the only profitable business Google has? If they sell it, there Google search, Gmail etc couldn't exist.

Sure, they'd rather lose 50B+ than do this...

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#79

Post by cmrdporcupine »

seydor wrote: post #20

it would be better if they broke the ad exchange from the rest. a google without the ad revenue doesnt make sense

Definitely makes sense to force them to split between buy and sell side of the ad market. Ad exchange definitely is one aspect of that, but I get the impression there's a lot more than that in terms of "playing both sides." The lines have become very blurry.

It's been over a decade since I worked in ads, though, so I'm no expert. I did spend a short period of time on the Google AdX team after they bought the company I worked at (AdMeld) and sunk it. Itself a whole topic of anti-trust discussion.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#80

Post by wongarsu »

pmoriarty wrote: post #48

"The Commission is concerned that Google’s allegedly intentional conducts aimed at giving [Google’s ad exchange] AdX a competitive advantage and may have foreclosed rival ad exchanges." So the goal is for there to be more competition among advertisers? That might help ad purchasers (ie. mostly corporations), but consumers are still going to be screwed as this does nothing to stop the spying and advertising that are w…

The EU already made multiple attempts to get that under control, notably first with the Cookie Law and later with GDPR. The problem is that those have mechanism that allow the user to accept tracking, and Google does its best to get website owners to make their user agree by any means nessesary. In analytics there's some competition, and I can run self-hosted cookieless Maomo or plausibly.io if I want to get actionable insights without having the user opt-out of privacy protections. In advertising there's much less competition, and thus little in the way of privacy-friendly options. Forcing more competion might solve this.
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