5 ms·

Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

• jordanb 24d ago
  That "Lake America" is doing a hell of a lot of work for Google
  • okdood64 24d ago
    You mean by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema who was appointed by Clinton and has ruled against Trump policies/agenda regularly?
    • owebmaster 24d ago
      [flagged]
  • bitpush 24d ago
    Isnt that updated by some national database and google just pulls that data? Apparently Apple Maps will also get it in a few days, since they get the data from them as well.
    • jvolkman 24d ago
      Yes. We had the same comments about Gulf of America. Edit: I don't know that there's an actual database served up by the US Gov, but governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions. All of the big mapping products have the ability to serve up different names based on where you're viewing from. And Apple just renamed: https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google-14abb66fe0ecfa05bffd42fb083dc70d https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google...
      • ericmay 24d ago
        [flagged]
        • nancyminusone 24d ago
          So unimportant that you just have to comment on how unimportant it is
          • ericmay 24d ago
            It’s so unimportant folks are commenting on my comment about how unimportant it is!
      • TazeTSchnitzel 24d ago
        https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc... GNIS, Geographic Names Information System (Which still shows Lake Ontario for me as I write this. The body of water along the US's southern coast is Gulf of America however.)
        • michchinn 24d ago
          > Per Secretarial Order 3453, Lake Ontario has been renamed to Lake America. The basemaps for GNIS are in the process of being updated to reflect this name change. I see this on the top bar
        • jonas21 24d ago
          The database entry was updated to "Lake America" on August 27: https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/970427 https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc... GNIS renders their own static map tiles, so it may take a while for the update to be reflected on the map itself.
      • biophysboy 24d ago
        It makes perfect sense that govs control names within their jurisdiction - I am eyerolling at both the name change and the reaction. I am curious though - is it convention to leave the data as is, or is it illegal to modify it? Regardless, itll just be changed back in 2 years; as long as I can type "lake ontario" and get directed to Lake Ontario, I do not care at all what the gov database calls it currently.
    • bee_rider 24d ago
      Seems like something that should be user-configurable (like DNS servers). While the recent annoying renamings have drawn attention to the issue, landmark names have basically always been political.
    • spogbiper 24d ago
      https://www.reuters.com/world/us/apple-maps-changes-name-lake-ontario-lake-america-2026-09-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/apple-maps-changes-name-lak... Apple updated it yesterday. If I were Google I'd turn down that refresh rate and let someone else take the bad PR next time
      • lotsofpulp 24d ago
        There is no bad PR, 99% of people don’t care.
    • avs733 24d ago
      I have been wondering this as well. I cannot imagine having this be autoupdated without review from a centralized database is a good idea. This is a process that needs to be frangible and have some friction in it. In this day and age, GPS mapping tools have major implications for societal function, safety, economics, national security, healthcare, etc. I'm struggling to think of an industry where a sudden absence/subtle changes of named GPS mapping data would not have an effect. If everyone relied on the same data base which could push changes to the map in the pocket of every resident of a nation that would be the first thing I would think to hack. Probably easier than actually jamming or spoofing GPS/GNSS over a huge area.
      • bpodgursky 24d ago
        There are thousands of small street changes across the country each day. New subdivisions, road expansions, lane changes, new traffic lights. Of course the vast majority should be auto-updated without manual review, what would a person add to the process? The public database is the system of record in the first place.
      • GJim 23d ago
        > GPS mapping tools You mean GPS (or rather GNSS) navigation tools. GPS != map
  • strictnein 24d ago
    The judge was appointed by Clinton, so they've been in their role for decades now. It seems unlikely that someone who has served that long in her position would rule based on making the child in the White House happy.
    • bigyabai 24d ago
      To the contrary, the entire DOJ understands that FAANG and the three-letter-agencies are one revolving door. Any judge that attempts to defang Google's data collection may well run afoul of the American surveillance system, which this administration will fight tooth and nail to defend. Not very different from how federal protectionism keeps Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible market damage. Anyone trying to loosen America's grip on software distribution is crossing an ugly national security line that we're all too ashamed to admit exists.
      • vasco 24d ago
        Since you are getting no replies but getting downvoted I'm adding source from 2016 corroborating what you mention: https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-revolving-door-us https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-rev... 251 individuals in such detected instances just in google. And that report is 10 years old, I'd bet it's 10x that by now.
        • strictnein 24d ago
          That makes the argument worse, not better. Google employees tens of thousands of people. The US intelligence apparatus employees hundreds of thousands of people. In all of that, over eight years, there are 251 people who moved between the two, and because of that absolute rounding error, the entire federal government is beholden to them? Since you are making the accusation that this is a real conspiracy: statistically, how many people should have rotated between these two giant employers over an 8 year span? The answer isn't zero. Also, this makes the "data" even more pointless: "between Google or related firms, and the federal government, national political campaigns and Congress during President Obama’s time in office" "were appointed to federal advisory boards." Do you know how many of those boards exist? There are tons of them. I've known a couple of people who have served on them. They're incredibly boring and deal with things like "What accessibility standards should federal government websites support?". Of course you would want people from Google on that type of board. > 251 individuals in such detected instances just in google. And that report is 10 years old, I'd bet it's 10x that by now. "Detected instances" It's so secret that I can name one of them off the top of my head: Matt Cutts. Is he part of this vast conspiracy too?
  • hn_throwaway_99 24d ago
    To all the people pissed about the "Lake America" stuff: why in the actual fuck do you want Google of all organizations to be arbiter of geographical info, instead of federal institutions that are (at least nominally) operated under democratic principles? Don't you understand the horror of what you're suggesting: "I want Google to impose it's own personal value judgments over the government's." Yes, I think it's incredibly stupid, 3rd grader childlike to call this "Lake America". But the problem is not Google, the problem is the ass hats we (collectively, even if not you/me personally) voted for. The problem is especially with our Congressional reps who have just neutered themselves in service to this stupidity. And I get it, our federal institutions have definitely showed their frailty lately, but I can't fathom then why people think the proper solution is to give more decision-making authority to Google.
    • dragontamer 24d ago
      Yeah it's meaningless to fight. Except not really. If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario across the board, and use the difference to find who is or isn't on my side on that issue. The only people calling it Gulf of America or Lake America are hardcore MAGATs in my social circle. Even former Trump voters in my social circle are annoyed and not using the new names. So it's an effective way to figure out who is or isn't going along with the Administration today.
      • xp84 24d ago
        > If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario This is the same logic that the right wing used when they disagreed with Obama on some issues, so they blocked his Supreme Court nominations just because anything Obama does must be bad. Sounds like your social circle is in denial. There are certainly plenty of things Trump, buffoon and graft-a-holic he is, has done that are corrupt. Renaming bodies of water doesn't look like one of them. (Obviously, because he would have renamed it after a donor, or at least after himself.) I mean, sure, we can all call anything whatever. I can call New Mexico "Best Mexico" or call Washington, DC "Bad Washington" and that's my right. But pretending that there aren't official names for things because we don't like the current guy seems immature. It's clearly within the authority of the government. Talk like this makes me think that people want to just live in a reality defined exclusively by party politics where we just pretend every law or policy made by The Bad Party doesn't exist, rather than try to win elections so we can shape the one actual reality.
  • deleted 24d ago
    [deleted]
  • bradthebeaverfa 24d ago
    As much as I love when people pretend Trump is the first government official to ever rename something, there is no evidence this had any impact on the court's decision.
  • tzs 23d ago
    They didn't do anything special for "Lake America". Google's long standing maps policy is to show people the names that their government says they have. As soon as that name showed up in the US government's database it showed up for people in the US on Google Maps. In Canada it shows up as "Lake Ontario" because that's what their government says it is. In the rest of the world it gets both names because the two governments whose territories it is in call it two different names.
• colincowardly 24d ago
  [flagged]
  • johndhi 24d ago
    I'm more on your side than most but surely you don't think zero antitrust enforcement is best for our country?
  • cyberax 24d ago
    Companies like modern Google should not be permissible in the even firster place.
  • krunck 24d ago
    > a great US institution So, too big to fail, but to small to be a monopoly that abuses it's power?
  • svachalek 24d ago
    Ah yes, the great US institution of ad tech. Mass privacy intrusion in the service of selling clicks for a nickel.
    • Natfan 24d ago
      Stalin wishes he had this much reach
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 24d ago
    Bring back Ma Bell and Standard Oil they were great US institutions!
    • wbl 24d ago
      Standard Oil was sued for keeping low prices thanks to vertical integration prompting the classic quip about antitrust litigation.
  • deaton 24d ago
    So because Google monopolizes on a big enough scale, suddenly they are too important to break up? I would argue that if any single company is big enough to where if it were to break up it would be "against the national interest," then it is too big and must be broken up.
• ocdtrekkie 24d ago
  What an incredible miscarriage of justice. Make enough money and pay off enough politicians, and you can pretty much shoot people on the street in broad daylight.
  • dgellow 24d ago
    [flagged]
    • Petersipoi 24d ago
      Just to make sure I'm understanding, you're saying that Google payed someone (presumably Trump), who then went and convinced a Clinton appointed judge who has ruled against Trump in the past to give the case to Google? Is that actually what you think?
      • dgellow 24d ago
        I do not no, I don’t have an opinion on the Google situation. I was responding to the following: > Make enough money and pay off enough politicians, and you can pretty much shoot people on the street in broad daylight.
    • deleted 24d ago
      [deleted]
  • strictnein 24d ago
    Assuming you read the ruling, what do you disagree with the judge on? What politicians were paid off to make a judge in a lifelong position who has served for decades rule in Google's favor?
    • shakna 24d ago
      What ruling? It isn't released yet. We have declining to breakup, based on behavioral remedies, and zero details.
      • 24d ago
• paulpauper 24d ago
  what shocker . google has a long history of prevailing in court
  • strictnein 24d ago
    The ACLU has a long history of prevailing in court, as does the NRA. Courts should regularly issue rulings you don't like. Their job isn't to make people happy.
    • cj 24d ago
      "long history of prevailing in court" is another way of saying "Google isn't being punished as much as they deserve" > Their job isn't to make people happy. Sure, but I think we can all agree the US legal system very, very, very rarely issues any ruling that materially punishes a corporation. Even the worst of the worst typically get off very easy. Do you disagree with that?
      • strictnein 24d ago
        > "long history of prevailing in court" is another way of saying "Google isn't being punished as much as they deserve" Those two things are completely different and have very different meanings. For the most part, the courts aren't the ones that fine businesses. > There have been more than 180,000 corporate fines issued in the US between 2020 and 2024, totaling more than $345 billion > 3M Company has been issued with the costliest fines, adding up to $18.6 billion $345 billion over 4 years seems like a lot to me. Maybe it should be higher? I don't know.
        • imglorp 24d ago
          The system is not equipped to check and balance multi-trillion dollar corporations.
          • SllX 24d ago
            “The system” by which I assume you mean the Government of the United States or America doesn’t need to, because “the system” is sovereign. Corporations are not. They get checked when they get checked, and this ruling only avoided a worse-case scenario for Google. It wasn’t a win for them either.
• CrzyLngPwd 24d ago
  So, essentially, a nothing burger. As usual.
• GreenVulpine 24d ago
  https://archive.is/rlAbY https://archive.is/rlAbY Non-paywalled link
• bunderbunder 24d ago
  More information on the specific remedies in the USDOJ announcement: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-wins-significant-remedies-against-google https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-wins-signi... Sounds like it's not nothing, but also not much.
  • bsimpson 24d ago
    > said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. That must have been in drafts for a while.
  • minouye 24d ago
    This is from last year (and a different trial).
• kerblang 24d ago
  I wonder if it would help to revoke patents that help google maintain its monopoly, assuming that's the case and it's doable by a judge/congress/someone? What exactly is the nature of its monopoly that moots competition? I was of understanding that it's more than just ads on google search results, isn't it?
• JMiao 24d ago
  twenty billion walkin out the court buildin woo woo!
• xp84 24d ago
  > Google’s ad tech business brought in $30 billion last year, or about 8 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Alphabet. Its ad tech revenue has declined for 16 straight quarters, and analysts estimate it accounts for less than 1 percent of the company’s profit... “This is a business no one cares about" Can someone closer to GOOG explain this? The phrase "ad tech" seems to have a very specific meaning here. Does this 1% include all advertising around the Web? Basically all ad revenue outside of Google's own properties? The number is surprisingly low.
  • cmrdporcupine 24d ago
    I haven't been in ads there in, like, over a decade and some but I believe what was under threat here was specifically Google's ad exchange network. Basically third party bidding for space in Google's display ad network. Basically a part of the business which sells excess "inventory" and which is a much smaller part of their ad business than AdWords and AdSense. Or whatever they call these things now. I used to work in AdX (and AdMeld that Google acquired) but not since 2014 or so. I believe the AdMeld acquisition itself was one of the things under the microscope here.
  • Drunk_Engineer 24d ago
    If it is a business no one cares about, then why has Google been fighting this?
    • xp84 24d ago
      The money is nbd, but it's much more important to Google (same as it would be for any of the other tech giants) to keep a certain streak going - 42 years now and counting since the government forced a large or important company to do anything even resembling breaking up. A loss here would serve as precedent (either legally, or at minimum in people's emotions) that you CAN force a divestiture. If Google can be forced to divest this business, why not Chrome, YouTube, or Android? Why can't Apple be forced to divest the App Store business, or Amazon be forced to divest AWS?
      • 24d ago
• sensanaty 24d ago
  > Google’s ad tech business brought in $30 billion last year, or about 8 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Alphabet. Its ad tech revenue has declined for 16 straight quarters, and analysts estimate it accounts for less than 1 percent of the company’s profit... “This is a business no one cares about" Uhhh, what? What kind of colorful accounting is this that they're pulling off?
  • cmrdporcupine 24d ago
    This isn't for the whole of Google's ad business. Just its ad exchange and I think parts of DFP; basically just mechanisms for auctioning off excess display ad inventory.
    • xp84 24d ago
      Thanks. I was trying to figure out exactly what's in scope here. I'd love to get a broad breakdown or a big pie chart that goes to this level of granularity so I can see where this sits within its other 'non-Google-property' ad businesses.
      • cmrdporcupine 24d ago
        Ads market is terrifyingly complicated. Or was when I worked in it fifteen years ago. I stopped following it out of disgust
    • strongpigeon 24d ago
      You’re partly right. It’s indeed mostly about AdX but also because Google owns all three sides of the equation (publisher-side via AdSense (and to a lesser extent DFP), AdX, and buy-side via Google Ads)
• spl757 24d ago
  I have no proof, but this just figures. It's entirely plausible that google gave some heavy-duty major dark money campaign donations and have used the return on their investment to avoid being broken up. Maybe I'm just cynical and the corporations and ultra-wealthy wouldn't really do anything like that all the time. They are ultra-greedy, though.
  • hightrix 24d ago
    > Sergey Brin ($154 billion), the co-founder of Alphabet and seventh-richest man in the world, joined Musk, Bezos and others in being seated behind Trump during the swearing-in. You aren't cynical. Big tech absolutely bent the knee and are now wearing red kneepads.
    • jpadkins 23d ago
      Correct. Trump has a lot of influence over liberal, Clinton appointed, judges.
  • anon84873628 23d ago
    You should probably learn how courts work so you can construct hypotheses that are consistent with observations. In this case, that the outcome was due to the ruling of a "liberal" judge, and not because the government withdrew its case.
• xahrepap 24d ago
  Slightly tangential thought: My belief is: legislation needs to either make it just as hard to merge two companies as it is to unmerge them, or make it just as easy to unmerge two companies as it is to merge them. It's insane to me that for how often companies merge and cause competition issues, we effectively never see the opposite happen. I know there's a ceremonial approval for merging two companies (at least in the US), but it's just impossible to undo or prevent the damage.
  • deleted 23d ago
    [deleted]
  • Arainach 24d ago
    > or make it just as easy to unmerge two companies as it is to merge them. [Disclaimer: I work at Google, all words my own and not representative of anyone, etc.] There's no such thing. Let's stick to software since it's what HN knows best, but it's a universal truth. Merging two companies: you take the two sides and they keep running. You probably need some extra accounting work to make sure the mandatory reports from each side get combined, but that's all you have to do. Splitting two companies: oof. If you split ChildCo out of ParentCo: * You need to hire all the roles that weren't part of that organization before (HR, legal, compliance, etc.) * You need to register this new entity in all the countries it operates and/or has employees in * Technologically it's somewhere between messy and impossible. Now you no longer have Google's build stack or monorepo. You have to rewrite everything. You can't just move some VMs to a cloud provider of choice
    • codewench 24d ago
      This is far from impossible, and happens all the time when, for example, a company spins off a subsidiary, or any number of other situations. It's hard isn't really a blocker, it's just saying 'this isn't convenient for us', which is why it would have to be forced by legislation.
      • Arainach 24d ago
        In none of those two cases is what's being proposed "as easy as a merger" - especially since those companies get to take as much time as they want without any court or law-enforced timeline.
• paaloeye 24d ago
  Arguably tangential, but for how long more will Nvidia and CUDA avoid the US anti-trust?
  • cyberax 24d ago
    Why would they be subjected to anti-trust? There's a robust competition from AMD and Intel, and NVidia is not using any obviously illegal competition tricks.
    • benchloftbrunch 23d ago
      Idk how you're defining "robust competition", but NVIDIA and CUDA definitely rule the GPU computing space right now, at least judging from a biased sample of what I read online. Those who experienced computing in the 1990s and 2000s know of the harmful effects that result when proprietary tech stacks become de facto monopolies. Think Adobe Flash, think Microsoft's "embrace/extend/extinguish" strategy. Perhaps antitrust law needs rework if it can't deal with this kind of monopoly.
      • cyberax 23d ago
        That's because CUDA had been better than alternatives for quite a while. But ROCm and MLX exist, and they are rapidly advancing. Google has its own chips, as does AWS. There are also no signs of NVidia colluding against other manufacturers. For example, AMD's MI350[P] are all sold out for the next year or so. I just don't see NVidia becoming the next MS circa year two thousand.
• shevy-java 24d ago
  The US judges lack courage here. This means they help Google power through with its de-facto monopoly. This is, interestingly, also against capitalism, since now you no longer have a truly free market; no real competition. It is just one giant blob contorlling (almost) everything. Every blind one sees how Google controls WAY too much. Youtube is part of Google too. It is a cash cow that excludes competitors.
  • pessimizer 24d ago
    This isn't a matter of courage. They're doing what they want to do. Clinton's deregulation, especially of telecommunications, is what lead to our horrible present (he appointed this judge.) The judges that Obama appointed literally don't believe that antitrust should exist.
    • andrekandre 24d ago
      yea, a lot of people claiming "but its a clinton judge" dont really get this i think...
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 24d ago
  > Google used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in search and search advertising.
• siliconc0w 24d ago
  We should just progressively tax monopolies. Companies will break themselves up to compete, no decade long DOJ case needed.
  • falcor84 24d ago
    Yes, this, and we need to have this progressive tax be over the company's total assets, including subsidiaries.
    • isubkhankulov 24d ago
      Why assets and not existing antitrust metrics like market share? Assuming market share is reasonably defined
      • nradov 24d ago
        Who gets to define the market? Does the "market" consist of only advertising technology platforms, or everything involved in online advertising, or all advertising through every possible channel worldwide?
      • miyoji 23d ago
        Because bad behavior tends to scale with company size, not because smaller companies are more virtuous, but because they just have less power to do harm than bigger companies. Imagine that there were only two companies, and they each had 50% market share in every market that exists. Would you expect either to be well behaved?
  • hammock 24d ago
    You may be surprised to learn that the US corporate tax (yes, that one, the main one we already have and everyone pays) was originally introduced in 1909 specifically as an antitrust measure, to clip the wings of US Steel and Standard Oil. Of course the best laid taxes always get abused or turn into something else entirely.
    • 23d ago
• godwinson__4-8 24d ago
  The United States government is fractured and can't get its act together. No one has a credible plan to solve this. Electing your preferred president doesn't solve a broken Senate and other structural problems. The presidency is likely to keep bouncing between parties that care as much (if not more) about undoing the previous four years as they do sketching out a coherent plan for the future four. How is wielding this weapon against our most innovative companies going to help the United States compete at scale against China? Scale is sort of required to do so. So if the government isn't going to be in the business of massive capex investment (the kind China subsidizes) well then you need massive private companies. The American peoples response to a future dictated by the terms of Chinese hegemony is break up the centers of American innovation? What do you think is keeping the capex cost manageable if it's not the government? How does Google work if you take away its cash cow? So many of you (I assume despite the complaining that > 99% of HN readers can afford it) need to just pay the $20 or whatever for YouTube premium if it's so terrible and get over yourselves. The tax your children will have to pay if the United States is reduced to a second rate power will be far greater. What's with people wanting free access to services and simultaneously offended by ads? I don't like them either but I understand it would be silly to think they should be free. They can be regulated or reformed in many ways, but the government should be highly restrained about cleaving apart companies. Just remember the powers you give the government today the next government will inherit, and it is not so easy for a party to maintain power for more than eight years. Meanwhile China is operating on government initiatives and sustained strategy on a timeline that spans decades. Companies need to be able to match this horizon without fear of whatever the new normal in Washington is every four years. The trend for the United States is not looking good.
  • andrekandre 24d ago
    > Meanwhile China is operating on government initiatives china fosters intense internal competition though; they don't just create and then subsidize some monopoly... avoiding breaking up mono/oligopolies feels the opposite (and a loosing strategy long-term imo)
    • godwinson__4-8 24d ago
• mrandish 24d ago
  While I lament another monopolistic tech giant yet again dodging the most meaningful regulatory consequences of their actions, the more useful meta-question is how these behomoths are now so reliably skirting major enforcement like break-ups. It's not that judges have gone soft or just that the current admin is nerfing enforcement (though they are), this trend goes back much further. The biggest factor is that tech giants now 'pre-game' major anti-trust relevant actions through an internal compliance team staffed by former regulators. The result is the slam dunk smoking guns of 20 years ago are rare. Today's monopolists artfully push right up to the line between "red-handed" and "arguable". Then take measures to fuzz that line and kick up clouds of plausible deniability in the record. Imagine how hard it would be to convict an embezzler who was carefully coached during the crime by expert former prosecutors and forensic accountants.
  • rkagerer 23d ago
    Thank you for your thoughtful and eloquently crafted comment.
    • kdidjwirjekej 23d ago
      Yep. Almost sounded like a human being. Very close to reaching a state of readability and ease of comprehension that humans tend to go for. I myself like to speak normally and actually say things, but I guess going round in circles and ultimately saying nothing is also a valid strategy…
      • mrandish 22d ago
        There was quite literally zero LLM in my response. Um, being a good writer and having a decent vocabulary isn't a crime? According to Pangram and GPTZero, what I wrote isn't AI. Maybe your AI detector isn't working as well as you think it is. Both my account and the GP are over 10 years old with >10,000 karma while your account was made minutes before your post and has zero karma.
• DarmokTanagra 24d ago
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• shoopadoop 24d ago
  The $22M ballroom donation was a pretty sweet deal. https://patriot.university/knowledge-base/organizations/org-technology/google-alphabet-corporate-donor-profile/ https://patriot.university/knowledge-base/organizations/org-... "$22 million ballroom contribution — the largest single documented amount from any corporate donor — arising from a lawsuit settlement over YouTube’s content moderation decision to suspend Trump post-January 6. Settlement filed September 29, 2025, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Trump v. YouTube, LLC et al.)."
• bdlowery 24d ago
  Good.
• crowcroft 24d ago
  They lost in court, and were found to be a Monopoly. The solution is they tell the court, "sorry we will stop abusing our behaviour now", and then it's just all good?
  • newtwentysix 23d ago
    all the "donations" are working, hence this. same with the meta case too.
    • anon84873628 23d ago
      And how exactly are they working? The DOJ didn't drop the case or withdraw its request for a breakup. And Judge Brinkema is the Clinton-appointed judge who just blocked Trump's 1.6B anti-weaponization fund, so it's not like she's in the administration's pocket.
    • tzs 23d ago
      Meta just had to make a settlement in a major case that is bad for them. That doesn't look like the "donations" are working very well. And yes, that settlement is bad for them. What nearly every commenter here in the threads about it overlooked is that it is not the only case against Meta. There are still several cases from governments below state level against them, and several thousand individual cases. Almost all the vast amounts of material the plaintiffs used in the recent case, including a massive amount of internal Meta documents plaintiffs got in discovery, material from depositions, material from experts, legal arguments, and more can now be used in those thousands of other cases. Thousands of small plaintiffs have just been handed a fully loaded anti-Meta weapon built using the vast resources of 47 state Attorney General's offices. Meta season is now open and they are going to be trying to doge Meta hunters who just got a big upgrade from the bows and arrows they hunted with before.
• andsoitis 24d ago
  > its ad tech business now there's the euphemism of the day. Alphabet derives 75% of their revenue from Ads. It is their business.
  • edg5000 23d ago
    The article seems to distingish ads from ad tech, stating ads bring in a lot of revenue, but ad tech not. Kinda confused about what the difference is.
    • andsoitis 23d ago
      I agree it doesn't make sense. How are they supposed to make money from ads without ad tech? They're intimately intertwined.
    • geocar 23d ago
      Ok, so "ad tech" is basically situations where someone pays you to run their ad network, like a newspaper or a magazine or something who sells their own ads to people. Google used to call this "Doubleclick for Publishers" (DFP) and don't anymore to be confusing, but I am going to use the old names so it is easier to tell you what each part of the business does. When someone sells "ads" they are selling the placement itself. When advertisers buy this, they use "AdWords" or "Doubleclick for Advertisers". Many DFP users got a checkbox one day permitting Google to sell ads and checked this. As a result, Google was able to outcompete _every_ ad publisher, and now "ad tech" doesn't make money buy "ads" does. Google is right that they cannot separate them, but is lying about why: Neither unit would be profitable without the monopoly, because quite frankly if someone else could sell ads without sucking a ton of money off the top to make a failing self-driving car company, they would and simply win on price.
      • edg5000 23d ago
        Thanks for the clarification
• taikhoom 23d ago
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• dev1ycan 23d ago
  They will always "avoid" stuff because there is no real antitrust anymore just the illusion of it, it stopped with Reagan.
• harrouet 22d ago
  At least there is Europe to enforce antitrust.