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I don't think this article explains it well. Google sells ad space on behalf of the publishers and also sells the ads on behalf of the advertisers. It also runs

I don't think this article explains it well. Google sells ad space on behalf of the publishers and also sells the ads on behalf of the advertisers. It also runs the auction that places the ads into the ad space. See this graphic https://images.app.goo.gl/ADx5xrAnWNicgoFu7 https://images.app.goo.gl/ADx5xrAnWNicgoFu7. Parts of this can definately be broken up without destroying Google.

coliveira 2y ago
Google can extract as much money as they want from this equation, up to the limit of available capital for advertising. They just need to squeeze more from publishers and at the same time increase click costs. They have been doing both of these for several years.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  > They just need to squeeze more from publishers and at the same time increase click costs. but publishers receive stable share of click cost (67%?), so they should be happy with this arrangement.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - stasomatic 2y ago
    That’s assuming a click happened. Premium pubs prefer guaranteed fixed CPMs no matter the amount of real clicks. I’ve worked for a few years at one of the major native ad companies, I’m very familiar with how the sausage is made.
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      In both scenarios publishers look good: 1. CPC: google has strong incentive to generate clicks, because that's where they get revenue: advertisers are charged per click. 2. CPM: publishers get their guaranteed CPM if that's their choice.
whatever1 2y ago
At the very least the exchange has to be audited. Currently we have no idea whether the prices are a result of natural supply-demand dynamics or whether the exchange keeps artificially pumping the prices with lackluster demand
- fidotron 2y ago
  Or design errors in the algorithms doing the bidding! There's serious nerd sniping potential in asking how best to construct an automatic bidder, especially with the speed and scale requirements in place. It's an incredibly deep problem, and I don't believe there is a single right answer.
  - shkkmo 2y ago
    > There's serious nerd sniping potential in asking how best to construct an automatic bidder, especially with the speed and scale requirements in place. It's an incredibly deep problem, and I don't believe there is a single right answer. The problem is that it is unwise to trust an bidding algorithm designer whose incentives are aligned against yours. Google benefits from higher winning bids.
    - scarmig 2y ago
      Key point is that it's a system that you shouldn't trust, not any individual algorithm designer or implementer. Bugs that cost Google money will be found and fixed really quickly; bugs that make Google money will linger and go unnoticed.
      - fidotron 2y ago
        Exactly. In the ad tech space the only winners are the people building and operating the adtech; everyone else is a sucker. The only truly novel version of it which I have seen emerged from the Turkish hypercasual games space, where they managed to construct a giant audience everyone else thought was worthless, funnel them into their games, and then use the attention in the games to sell access to this apparently worthless audience. Of course the audience actually were worthless, because all they were really interested in was new free hypercasual games, so the real suckers here were other devs that paid to access this audience but didn't have the adtech chops to make the most of it before the players moved on, and they funded their competition in the process.
sieabahlpark 2y ago
[dead]
jt2190 2y ago
Yeah I’m listening to a legal analyst on Bloomberg radio and there’s a lot of detail that’s getting lost under the headline. It’s not yet even clear yet that Google would need to divest from anything in order to address this. Bloomberg Radio April 17 2025: https://www.youtube.com/live/iEpJwprxDdk?si=9WaFIJENUwyIJvpk https://www.youtube.com/live/iEpJwprxDdk?si=9WaFIJENUwyIJvpk
fidotron 2y ago
In fairness to Google on this (and I cannot believe I just wrote that) it's common practice to be on both sides like this, and even to have some external exchange in the middle that you have a deal with just so you can claim it's obviously fair. That entire industry is a horrifying shitshow of sociopathy, at the expense of absolutely everyone else, both viewers (supply side) and advertisers (demand side).
- porridgeraisin 2y ago
  On the plus side, it would be nice to make an example of Google and deal a blow to ad tech in general. At this point even putting to sleep the entire google(or any other ad tech company of your choosing) Board is acceptable if it means ad tech shuts down.
riku_iki 2y ago
> Parts of this can definately be broken up without destroying Google. its about Display Ads business, which is 10% of Google revenue as per article. So, everything there can be broken up without destroying Google.
pydry 2y ago
The question is more "would you expect google to reoffend given the chance again?" Not "is it strictly necessary for them to be broken up to prevent them from reoffending"? 100% I would expect them to reoffend. No question whatsoever.
shostack 2y ago
There's a lot of unknowns at this point, but here's an industry piece for a more informed perspective on it. https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-is-found-guilty-of-operating-an-ad-tech-monopoly/ https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-is-found-guilty...
hammock 2y ago
And crucially, there are leaked emails, other evidence that demonstrate (at the very least historical and occasional) corruption of this dual- (multi?) agency arrangement. Among the allegations: The Google ad exchange favored its own platforms, limiting the ability of other exchanges to compete fairly in bidding for ad inventory. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies#:~:text=Distorting%20Auction%20Competition:%20Limiting%20real%2Dtime%20bidding%20on,same%20terms%20as%20Google's%20ad%20exchange;%20and. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... In limiting the number of bidders, Google inflated the prices for ad inventory. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-26/closing-arguments-given-in-google-antitrust-case/104644440#:~:text=In%20short:%20In%20the%20closing%20arguments%20of,a%20monopoly%20over%20the%20online%20ad%20market. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-26/closing-arguments-giv... Google engaged in bid rigging where competitors agree on who will win a bid, again to inflate prices. https://www.justice.gov/atr/preventing-and-detecting-bid-rigging-price-fixing-and-market-allocation-post-disaster-rebuilding#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20common,give%20the%20appearance%20of%20competition. https://www.justice.gov/atr/preventing-and-detecting-bid-rig... Google entered market allocation agreements to create an unfair playing field. https://www.winston.com/en/insights-news/avoiding-antitrust-issues-in-search-term-ad-agreements#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20the%20Texas%20attorney%20general%2C%20joined%20by,market%20allocation%20agreement%20to%20rig%20advertising%20bids. https://www.winston.com/en/insights-news/avoiding-antitrust-...
- andreimackenzie 2y ago
  > In limiting the number of bidders, Google inflated the prices for ad inventory. This part doesn't make sense to me. Limiting bidders should drive the price down, because fewer advertisers are competing for the same potential ad impression. The article describes Google's influence as "Google controls the auction-style system," which is a bit more open-ended about the specific alleged practices.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - InsomniacL 2y ago
crowcroft 2y ago
When a media buyer puts $1.00 in on one side of the system, on average only $0.60 makes it to the publisher. In some cases less than $0.50 gets to them. Advertising is an intentionally complex system so that companies can clip the ticket at multiple stages throughout the process. Google should be broken up, but the whole ad tech system needs to go into the bin if these problems are going to ever get fixed. https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/02/15/how-much-of-your-dollar-goes-to-working-media-in-digital/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/02/15/how-muc...
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  The (Open)RTB system makes things more competitive and reduces costs for advertisers by making unsold inventory available to an automated marketplace while also increasing revenue for smaller publishers who otherwise wouldn't have been able to create first party relationships with advertisers. The middlemen are various identity providers and other tracking/data enrichment services, as well as third party exchanges, DSPs and SSPs. Believe it or not this system makes it a lot cheaper than just having someone buy ad space directly on a website > Three industry studies showed less than 50 cents of every dollar goes to showing ads. Every penny of what is spent goes to showing ads, by definition. However, that doesn't mean that every penny goes to the publisher. The advertiser may look at the 60 cents being spent on everybody between them and the publisher and say "hey, I'm getting ripped off! I could be paying 4 cents/CPM instead of 10 cents/CPM!" but each middleman (usually) adds some kind of value to increase acquisition rate. For example: * Identity providers who have lists of user IDs that belong to "high CTR" audiences (users more likely to click ads) * Geo providers who tell the bidders where the User's location is so that they can target locally-focused advertisements to them * User intent plugins, "abandoned cart" retargeting, product recommendation providers, etc. who look at user interaction events and build profiles of people who can be retargeted * Exchanges which conduct auctions across multiple DSPs to get a better price for publishers while also making more inventory available to advertisers At one company I worked for, we allocated impressions ahead of time. Based on prior years' data and viewer ratings of TV shows, we could predict the future, determining how many viewers a video or TV show would get, and then selling the advertising inventory based on that prediction. That shit ain't free! All of these things are designed to increase your acquisition rate from x% to y%, where x > y. Sure, you could just pay $5,000 a month to a website to show a banner ad directly, but a larger % of your money would be wasted on users who are utterly uninterested in your banner.
bilekas 2y ago
Breaking those parts away from google absolutely wouldn’t destroy them, over the years I’ve been so surprised from googlers at most levels explaining how much money they make from all their different services. While advertising is absolutely a big one, it’s by no means the only one, and if i understand the situation correctly, the more advertising options that are actually viable for companies will not even kill their advertising business. But big business real doesn’t like competition.
- Clubber 2y ago
  Everyone related to the company, from shareholders down to the lowest on the totem pole are incentivized in some way to show quarterly growth, so they will do so at all costs.
38 2y ago
use the actual link please https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526537cc73ff51e.jpg https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526...
lifestyleguru 2y ago
> See this graphic https://images.app.goo.gl/ADx5xrAnWNicgoFu7 https://images.app.goo.gl/ADx5xrAnWNicgoFu7. Which part of this diagram is responsible for displaying ads of blue sweatshirt when I say "blue sweatshirt" in a room next to the room where my smartphone is?
glitchc 2y ago
Decoupling the advertising marketplace from the platform would be a huge win for consumers. It would also help Google focus on products again instead of constantly bowing to the almighty ad dollar.
crowcroft 2y ago
And sometimes they're the publisher as well!
lucb1e 2y ago
There's some irony in having to click past a Google tracking wall to see the graphic you shared in this thread, especially when that graphic isn't actually Google's. It's from Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526537cc73ff51e.jpg https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526... (contained in this article: https://gizmodo.com/google-lawsuit-justice-department-ads-antitrust-explain-1850031288 https://gizmodo.com/google-lawsuit-justice-department-ads-an...) Was looking over my mom's shoulder last week to see what site she was reading out some information from. It was "google.com" but looked like a third party website, probably this AMP thing? Google really is hijacking everything
brikym 2y ago
It's a lot more complex than that. Google has been caught putting their finger on the scale in the auction process. Not not entirely sure how they did it but I believe they were outbidding third party bidders by a cent because they're downstream in the chain.
dumbledoren 2y ago
Yep. On top of that, it also controls the algorithm. Recently it has been tweaking the algorithm to sell non-relevant keywords to advertisers by making 'exact match' not 'exact' anymore. People have been burning their ad budgets for worthless traffic as a result, and PPC professionals are livid over it with every other post in communities talking about it: https://reddit.com/r/ppc https://reddit.com/r/ppc Recently someone even posted a timeline of google starting to hide the keywords advertisers are buying and the increase in Google's ad revenue. Eye opening.
TZubiri 2y ago
Doesn't that depend on how finely you want to break up the "parts"? Or on what dimension? Google does search ads mostly, has competition with say, bing, amazon, chatgpt now. On video ads they have competition with tiktok, netflix (even if they don't do ads I guess), and tv. Maybe there's specific criteria that have legal precedent or sources, but I don't see it.

coliveira 2y ago

Google can extract as much money as they want from this equation, up to the limit of available capital for advertising. They just need to squeeze more from publishers and at the same time increase click costs. They have been doing both of these for several years.

riku_iki 2y ago
> They just need to squeeze more from publishers and at the same time increase click costs. but publishers receive stable share of click cost (67%?), so they should be happy with this arrangement.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- stasomatic 2y ago
  That’s assuming a click happened. Premium pubs prefer guaranteed fixed CPMs no matter the amount of real clicks. I’ve worked for a few years at one of the major native ad companies, I’m very familiar with how the sausage is made.
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    In both scenarios publishers look good: 1. CPC: google has strong incentive to generate clicks, because that's where they get revenue: advertisers are charged per click. 2. CPM: publishers get their guaranteed CPM if that's their choice.

whatever1 2y ago

At the very least the exchange has to be audited. Currently we have no idea whether the prices are a result of natural supply-demand dynamics or whether the exchange keeps artificially pumping the prices with lackluster demand

fidotron 2y ago
Or design errors in the algorithms doing the bidding! There's serious nerd sniping potential in asking how best to construct an automatic bidder, especially with the speed and scale requirements in place. It's an incredibly deep problem, and I don't believe there is a single right answer.
- shkkmo 2y ago
  > There's serious nerd sniping potential in asking how best to construct an automatic bidder, especially with the speed and scale requirements in place. It's an incredibly deep problem, and I don't believe there is a single right answer. The problem is that it is unwise to trust an bidding algorithm designer whose incentives are aligned against yours. Google benefits from higher winning bids.
  - scarmig 2y ago
    Key point is that it's a system that you shouldn't trust, not any individual algorithm designer or implementer. Bugs that cost Google money will be found and fixed really quickly; bugs that make Google money will linger and go unnoticed.
    - fidotron 2y ago
      Exactly. In the ad tech space the only winners are the people building and operating the adtech; everyone else is a sucker. The only truly novel version of it which I have seen emerged from the Turkish hypercasual games space, where they managed to construct a giant audience everyone else thought was worthless, funnel them into their games, and then use the attention in the games to sell access to this apparently worthless audience. Of course the audience actually were worthless, because all they were really interested in was new free hypercasual games, so the real suckers here were other devs that paid to access this audience but didn't have the adtech chops to make the most of it before the players moved on, and they funded their competition in the process.

sieabahlpark 2y ago

[dead]

jt2190 2y ago

Yeah I’m listening to a legal analyst on Bloomberg radio and there’s a lot of detail that’s getting lost under the headline. It’s not yet even clear yet that Google would need to divest from anything in order to address this. Bloomberg Radio April 17 2025: https://www.youtube.com/live/iEpJwprxDdk?si=9WaFIJENUwyIJvpk https://www.youtube.com/live/iEpJwprxDdk?si=9WaFIJENUwyIJvpk

fidotron 2y ago

In fairness to Google on this (and I cannot believe I just wrote that) it's common practice to be on both sides like this, and even to have some external exchange in the middle that you have a deal with just so you can claim it's obviously fair. That entire industry is a horrifying shitshow of sociopathy, at the expense of absolutely everyone else, both viewers (supply side) and advertisers (demand side).

porridgeraisin 2y ago
On the plus side, it would be nice to make an example of Google and deal a blow to ad tech in general. At this point even putting to sleep the entire google(or any other ad tech company of your choosing) Board is acceptable if it means ad tech shuts down.

riku_iki 2y ago

> Parts of this can definately be broken up without destroying Google. its about Display Ads business, which is 10% of Google revenue as per article. So, everything there can be broken up without destroying Google.

pydry 2y ago

The question is more "would you expect google to reoffend given the chance again?" Not "is it strictly necessary for them to be broken up to prevent them from reoffending"? 100% I would expect them to reoffend. No question whatsoever.

shostack 2y ago

There's a lot of unknowns at this point, but here's an industry piece for a more informed perspective on it. https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-is-found-guilty-of-operating-an-ad-tech-monopoly/ https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-is-found-guilty...

hammock 2y ago

And crucially, there are leaked emails, other evidence that demonstrate (at the very least historical and occasional) corruption of this dual- (multi?) agency arrangement. Among the allegations: The Google ad exchange favored its own platforms, limiting the ability of other exchanges to compete fairly in bidding for ad inventory. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies#:~:text=Distorting%20Auction%20Competition:%20Limiting%20real%2Dtime%20bidding%20on,same%20terms%20as%20Google's%20ad%20exchange;%20and. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... In limiting the number of bidders, Google inflated the prices for ad inventory. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-26/closing-arguments-given-in-google-antitrust-case/104644440#:~:text=In%20short:%20In%20the%20closing%20arguments%20of,a%20monopoly%20over%20the%20online%20ad%20market. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-26/closing-arguments-giv... Google engaged in bid rigging where competitors agree on who will win a bid, again to inflate prices. https://www.justice.gov/atr/preventing-and-detecting-bid-rigging-price-fixing-and-market-allocation-post-disaster-rebuilding#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20common,give%20the%20appearance%20of%20competition. https://www.justice.gov/atr/preventing-and-detecting-bid-rig... Google entered market allocation agreements to create an unfair playing field. https://www.winston.com/en/insights-news/avoiding-antitrust-issues-in-search-term-ad-agreements#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20the%20Texas%20attorney%20general%2C%20joined%20by,market%20allocation%20agreement%20to%20rig%20advertising%20bids. https://www.winston.com/en/insights-news/avoiding-antitrust-...

andreimackenzie 2y ago
> In limiting the number of bidders, Google inflated the prices for ad inventory. This part doesn't make sense to me. Limiting bidders should drive the price down, because fewer advertisers are competing for the same potential ad impression. The article describes Google's influence as "Google controls the auction-style system," which is a bit more open-ended about the specific alleged practices.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- InsomniacL 2y ago

crowcroft 2y ago

When a media buyer puts $1.00 in on one side of the system, on average only $0.60 makes it to the publisher. In some cases less than $0.50 gets to them. Advertising is an intentionally complex system so that companies can clip the ticket at multiple stages throughout the process. Google should be broken up, but the whole ad tech system needs to go into the bin if these problems are going to ever get fixed. https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/02/15/how-much-of-your-dollar-goes-to-working-media-in-digital/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/02/15/how-muc...

shortrounddev2 2y ago
The (Open)RTB system makes things more competitive and reduces costs for advertisers by making unsold inventory available to an automated marketplace while also increasing revenue for smaller publishers who otherwise wouldn't have been able to create first party relationships with advertisers. The middlemen are various identity providers and other tracking/data enrichment services, as well as third party exchanges, DSPs and SSPs. Believe it or not this system makes it a lot cheaper than just having someone buy ad space directly on a website > Three industry studies showed less than 50 cents of every dollar goes to showing ads. Every penny of what is spent goes to showing ads, by definition. However, that doesn't mean that every penny goes to the publisher. The advertiser may look at the 60 cents being spent on everybody between them and the publisher and say "hey, I'm getting ripped off! I could be paying 4 cents/CPM instead of 10 cents/CPM!" but each middleman (usually) adds some kind of value to increase acquisition rate. For example: * Identity providers who have lists of user IDs that belong to "high CTR" audiences (users more likely to click ads) * Geo providers who tell the bidders where the User's location is so that they can target locally-focused advertisements to them * User intent plugins, "abandoned cart" retargeting, product recommendation providers, etc. who look at user interaction events and build profiles of people who can be retargeted * Exchanges which conduct auctions across multiple DSPs to get a better price for publishers while also making more inventory available to advertisers At one company I worked for, we allocated impressions ahead of time. Based on prior years' data and viewer ratings of TV shows, we could predict the future, determining how many viewers a video or TV show would get, and then selling the advertising inventory based on that prediction. That shit ain't free! All of these things are designed to increase your acquisition rate from x% to y%, where x > y. Sure, you could just pay $5,000 a month to a website to show a banner ad directly, but a larger % of your money would be wasted on users who are utterly uninterested in your banner.

bilekas 2y ago

Breaking those parts away from google absolutely wouldn’t destroy them, over the years I’ve been so surprised from googlers at most levels explaining how much money they make from all their different services. While advertising is absolutely a big one, it’s by no means the only one, and if i understand the situation correctly, the more advertising options that are actually viable for companies will not even kill their advertising business. But big business real doesn’t like competition.

Clubber 2y ago
Everyone related to the company, from shareholders down to the lowest on the totem pole are incentivized in some way to show quarterly growth, so they will do so at all costs.

38 2y ago

use the actual link please https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526537cc73ff51e.jpg https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526...

lifestyleguru 2y ago

> See this graphic https://images.app.goo.gl/ADx5xrAnWNicgoFu7 https://images.app.goo.gl/ADx5xrAnWNicgoFu7. Which part of this diagram is responsible for displaying ads of blue sweatshirt when I say "blue sweatshirt" in a room next to the room where my smartphone is?

glitchc 2y ago

Decoupling the advertising marketplace from the platform would be a huge win for consumers. It would also help Google focus on products again instead of constantly bowing to the almighty ad dollar.

crowcroft 2y ago

And sometimes they're the publisher as well!

lucb1e 2y ago

There's some irony in having to click past a Google tracking wall to see the graphic you shared in this thread, especially when that graphic isn't actually Google's. It's from Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526537cc73ff51e.jpg https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526... (contained in this article: https://gizmodo.com/google-lawsuit-justice-department-ads-antitrust-explain-1850031288 https://gizmodo.com/google-lawsuit-justice-department-ads-an...) Was looking over my mom's shoulder last week to see what site she was reading out some information from. It was "google.com" but looked like a third party website, probably this AMP thing? Google really is hijacking everything

brikym 2y ago

It's a lot more complex than that. Google has been caught putting their finger on the scale in the auction process. Not not entirely sure how they did it but I believe they were outbidding third party bidders by a cent because they're downstream in the chain.

dumbledoren 2y ago

Yep. On top of that, it also controls the algorithm. Recently it has been tweaking the algorithm to sell non-relevant keywords to advertisers by making 'exact match' not 'exact' anymore. People have been burning their ad budgets for worthless traffic as a result, and PPC professionals are livid over it with every other post in communities talking about it: https://reddit.com/r/ppc https://reddit.com/r/ppc Recently someone even posted a timeline of google starting to hide the keywords advertisers are buying and the increase in Google's ad revenue. Eye opening.

TZubiri 2y ago

Doesn't that depend on how finely you want to break up the "parts"? Or on what dimension? Google does search ads mostly, has competition with say, bing, amazon, chatgpt now. On video ads they have competition with tiktok, netflix (even if they don't do ads I guess), and tv. Maybe there's specific criteria that have legal precedent or sources, but I don't see it.