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> the DOJ hopes to prove that Google's alleged monopoly has shuttered newspapers across the US and threatens to do more harm if left unchecked What does this m

> the DOJ hopes to prove that Google's alleged monopoly has shuttered newspapers across the US and threatens to do more harm if left unchecked What does this mean lol. Isn't the real reason that newpapers a shuttering because no one reads newspapers.

braiamp 2y ago
Newspapers get monetized via ads. Google search being the prime entry point was "preventing" clicks by summarizing articles. Also, Adsense being the biggest kid in the block could set prices due their position as a king maker.
- bbor 2y ago
  Hmm close but not quite, IMO. That all happens, but this article is about Google's tendency to actively defend their monopoly over the "Ad Exchange" market, which is how publishers (newspapers) are connected to buyers of advertising space (advertisers, both brand advertisers like Coca-Cola and performance advertisers like mobile games). It's nothing complex, just the same ol' man-in-the-middle racket that impoverishes both sides as they skim off the top, confident that neither party can go to a competitor. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//adexchange/AdExchangeOverview.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue They very much are trying to muddy the waters here, so no hate for the misunderstanding. This is the third active anti-trust suit they're currently involved in, after all! Also, as always: AFAIK ;)
- skybrian 2y ago
  It doesn't look like Google summarizes news articles, though: Google News has headlines and photos. It used to have snippets, but that was many years ago. In search results, there is a very brief snippet from the article.
- pkaye 2y ago
  Lot of newspapers in the US used to rely on money through classified ads but that was taken over by Craigslist. https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-killed-newspapers-golden-goose/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-kil...
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Craigslist is largely a ghost town these days: a lot of that stuff has moved to Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, etc. for selling stuff, and dating apps for the "personals" stuff. Basically, decades ago before the internet, newspapers served a role in facilitating communication between strangers, in a rather poor fashion. Individuals didn't have the money to have their own printing press and distribution system, so they had no way of contacting people unless they already knew their telephone number, or knowing what others had to offer. So newspapers had the "classified ads" section so people could spend a small amount of money and run a very tiny ad in the weekly newspaper for others in their town to see, and it was easy for the newspapers to just add a few extra pages with this stuff at the end. The internet simply made this all obsolete. If the newspapers had been really forward-thinking, they would have created first the social network services and become dominant there before MySpace, Digg, and Facebook came along. But it took them ages to even start thinking about anything besides a business model dependent on printing newspapers.
accurrent 2y ago
The way this case is being handled all I see is the courts are trying to make other business people richer. They remain hostile to the consumer. Its a case of legal protection for the rich. I feel the harms that traditional publishers cause are immense as well. They dont pay their employees properly, are controlled by sketchy media moguls. Quite frankly traditional publishing houses just failed to adapt with the times.
- cornel_io 2y ago
  Yes, Lina Khan has been very clear that she wants to abandon the previous guidelines that made consumer harm the focal point of anti-trust cases. I think that's pretty shady and in several of these cases she really just wants to spear any old Big Fucking Whale so it looks like she's been successful. That said, "consumer" really does mean other companies when it comes to Google ads, since they directly pay them a TON of money, so if they can prove that Google's monopoly is distorting the market I think this is fair game, 100%. And the ad market has been incredibly shitty for a very long time because if you don't have an audience in the billions you can't even try to compete, so anything that can open that up to some innovation would be positive, and price competition would allow a lot of products to exist and thrive that otherwise would have failed because cost of user acquisition was too high. That is very good for consumers. Or it could be really negative, depending how they implement it. The funny thing is, despite the company fighting against it strongly, it's uncertain how good or bad it would be for Google shareholders, oftentimes breakups are very good for their stock because as each piece of the company is unshackled from the others, things that would be profitable for the division but get blocked by other interests at the company all of a sudden become possible: IIRC the combined value of the Baby Bells ended up far greater a few years after the breakup, for one example. The only people it's guaranteed to be bad for are the people at the top at Google, who would have their kingdoms shredded up and taken away from them.
  - crabmusket 2y ago
    What do you find shady about moving away from the consumer welfare standard, Khan herself aside? In my view, returning from a Borkian era back towards something more Brandeisian makes a lot of sense. "Consumer welfare" to me feels like it assumes a functioning free market system, but antitrust should deal with powerful entities that are already able to distort "free" market functioning by their size and power. But, I'm politically an anarchist so of course I would have a "big is bad" bias.
jeffbee 2y ago
Craigslist killed the newspapers. They were abusive local monopolies who charged $50 to run a used car advertisement and Craig Newmark nuked them.
yathaid 2y ago
From the article: >> On Monday, Wood told Brinkema that Google intentionally put itself in this position to "manipulate the rules of ad auctions to its own benefit," The Washington Post reported. A better way to understand this is that Google allegedly forced publishers to use Google's ad server and ad exchange if they wanted traffic from Google ads. From [1]: >> After buying DoubleClick, Google tied its control over advertising demand to publisher use of its software. As the DOJ put it in the complaint, "If publishers wanted access to exclusive Google Ads’ advertising demand, they had to use Google’s publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX), rather than equivalent tools offered by Google’s rivals." The result is that it acquired a monopoly across the entire industry, in the software publishers use and the matching engine for advertisers. [1] - https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-post-google-world https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-post-google-world
- bawolff 2y ago
  Im not sure i get it. It seems like a stretch to say that that caused newsapers to all go out of business.
- asdasdsddd 2y ago
  Isn't the party here that's getting hurt the "equivalent tools offered by Google’s rivals". I'm still not seeing how this hurts publishers. Or is this like, if you want to show google ads, you can't show ads from other ad providers.
gerash 2y ago
Internet killed local newspapers. They lost the geographic monopolies

braiamp 2y ago

Newspapers get monetized via ads. Google search being the prime entry point was "preventing" clicks by summarizing articles. Also, Adsense being the biggest kid in the block could set prices due their position as a king maker.

bbor 2y ago
Hmm close but not quite, IMO. That all happens, but this article is about Google's tendency to actively defend their monopoly over the "Ad Exchange" market, which is how publishers (newspapers) are connected to buyers of advertising space (advertisers, both brand advertisers like Coca-Cola and performance advertisers like mobile games). It's nothing complex, just the same ol' man-in-the-middle racket that impoverishes both sides as they skim off the top, confident that neither party can go to a competitor. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//adexchange/AdExchangeOverview.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue They very much are trying to muddy the waters here, so no hate for the misunderstanding. This is the third active anti-trust suit they're currently involved in, after all! Also, as always: AFAIK ;)
skybrian 2y ago
It doesn't look like Google summarizes news articles, though: Google News has headlines and photos. It used to have snippets, but that was many years ago. In search results, there is a very brief snippet from the article.
pkaye 2y ago
Lot of newspapers in the US used to rely on money through classified ads but that was taken over by Craigslist. https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-killed-newspapers-golden-goose/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-kil...
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Craigslist is largely a ghost town these days: a lot of that stuff has moved to Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, etc. for selling stuff, and dating apps for the "personals" stuff. Basically, decades ago before the internet, newspapers served a role in facilitating communication between strangers, in a rather poor fashion. Individuals didn't have the money to have their own printing press and distribution system, so they had no way of contacting people unless they already knew their telephone number, or knowing what others had to offer. So newspapers had the "classified ads" section so people could spend a small amount of money and run a very tiny ad in the weekly newspaper for others in their town to see, and it was easy for the newspapers to just add a few extra pages with this stuff at the end. The internet simply made this all obsolete. If the newspapers had been really forward-thinking, they would have created first the social network services and become dominant there before MySpace, Digg, and Facebook came along. But it took them ages to even start thinking about anything besides a business model dependent on printing newspapers.

accurrent 2y ago

The way this case is being handled all I see is the courts are trying to make other business people richer. They remain hostile to the consumer. Its a case of legal protection for the rich. I feel the harms that traditional publishers cause are immense as well. They dont pay their employees properly, are controlled by sketchy media moguls. Quite frankly traditional publishing houses just failed to adapt with the times.

cornel_io 2y ago
Yes, Lina Khan has been very clear that she wants to abandon the previous guidelines that made consumer harm the focal point of anti-trust cases. I think that's pretty shady and in several of these cases she really just wants to spear any old Big Fucking Whale so it looks like she's been successful. That said, "consumer" really does mean other companies when it comes to Google ads, since they directly pay them a TON of money, so if they can prove that Google's monopoly is distorting the market I think this is fair game, 100%. And the ad market has been incredibly shitty for a very long time because if you don't have an audience in the billions you can't even try to compete, so anything that can open that up to some innovation would be positive, and price competition would allow a lot of products to exist and thrive that otherwise would have failed because cost of user acquisition was too high. That is very good for consumers. Or it could be really negative, depending how they implement it. The funny thing is, despite the company fighting against it strongly, it's uncertain how good or bad it would be for Google shareholders, oftentimes breakups are very good for their stock because as each piece of the company is unshackled from the others, things that would be profitable for the division but get blocked by other interests at the company all of a sudden become possible: IIRC the combined value of the Baby Bells ended up far greater a few years after the breakup, for one example. The only people it's guaranteed to be bad for are the people at the top at Google, who would have their kingdoms shredded up and taken away from them.
- crabmusket 2y ago
  What do you find shady about moving away from the consumer welfare standard, Khan herself aside? In my view, returning from a Borkian era back towards something more Brandeisian makes a lot of sense. "Consumer welfare" to me feels like it assumes a functioning free market system, but antitrust should deal with powerful entities that are already able to distort "free" market functioning by their size and power. But, I'm politically an anarchist so of course I would have a "big is bad" bias.

jeffbee 2y ago

Craigslist killed the newspapers. They were abusive local monopolies who charged $50 to run a used car advertisement and Craig Newmark nuked them.

yathaid 2y ago

From the article: >> On Monday, Wood told Brinkema that Google intentionally put itself in this position to "manipulate the rules of ad auctions to its own benefit," The Washington Post reported. A better way to understand this is that Google allegedly forced publishers to use Google's ad server and ad exchange if they wanted traffic from Google ads. From [1]: >> After buying DoubleClick, Google tied its control over advertising demand to publisher use of its software. As the DOJ put it in the complaint, "If publishers wanted access to exclusive Google Ads’ advertising demand, they had to use Google’s publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX), rather than equivalent tools offered by Google’s rivals." The result is that it acquired a monopoly across the entire industry, in the software publishers use and the matching engine for advertisers. [1] - https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-post-google-world https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-post-google-world

bawolff 2y ago
Im not sure i get it. It seems like a stretch to say that that caused newsapers to all go out of business.
asdasdsddd 2y ago
Isn't the party here that's getting hurt the "equivalent tools offered by Google’s rivals". I'm still not seeing how this hurts publishers. Or is this like, if you want to show google ads, you can't show ads from other ad providers.

gerash 2y ago

Internet killed local newspapers. They lost the geographic monopolies