My post was explaining why we haven’t had a decision on breaking up Google’s illegal ad tech monopoly.

Basically, the judge Leonie Brinkema has been super busy.

The Google break-up - and with it the fate of the open web - is just one of the many massive cases on her to-do list.

Judge Leonie Brinkema has been busy.

First, she ordered the release of a Venezuelan couple with temporary protected status whom the Trump administration had detained.

And days ago, she blocked Trump’s US$1.776 billion Anti-Weaponisation Fund - a slush fund critics said was rigged to reward political allies, potentially including January 6 rioters.

My post was to share the good news that now she’s free, and unravelling with Google’s illegal antitrust monopoly - and returning the ads that she called the “lifeblood" of the open web - is her top priority.

But back to the question the reader asked, because I had published this chart in the post.

It compared Google own revenue growth (in green) against the falling ad revenue flowing through to the open web, through what Google calls Network ads (in red).

The reader called Myles asked me: “Hey mate, can you explain this diagram to me? Google search I get, but Network?”

It felt like time for another episode of Future Media Explains, so here goes.

Chunky revenue

Google has a monopoly in search, and an illegal monopoly in ad tech.

We know this from the antitrust trials brought by the US Department of Justice over the past few years.

Google is required by law to report its revenue in quarterly updates to America’s Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC.

And it reports its earnings - which passed a record $402 billion last year - in chunks.

This is a screen from Google’s latest quarterly update showing its revenue (in billions) from Search, YouTube and the Google Network.

And it’s that Network line that I was posting about, and what led to the question.

Network is where Google reports all the other money it makes, and within this number, is how much advertising Google’s ad network shares with the rest of the open web.

Let me explain.

Google has an all encompassing planetary-scale monopoly on digital advertising through its ad tech. It controls how ads are sold, delivered and measured.

It has the world’s most dominant ad server called Google Ad Manager, known as GAM.

Almost all the world’s publishers and almost all ad-funded websites on the web use it to find and deliver ads on their websites.

Google then has an ad network called AdX. Think of it as a dam full of ads looking for a place to be served.

Almost every advertiser and advertising agency in the world relies on it to get their ads from their whiteboards to the people they are looking to sell products to.

And it’s massive.

Around half of all the world’s ad demand - that’s advertisers looking for audiences - is transacted through here.

And we know from evidence surfaced at the trial that its scale is almost impossible to the human mind to comprehend.

How it works

Let’s say Hyundai wants to sell its SUV to 25 to 35-year-old women who have recently had children and need trunk space who live on the East Coast of the United States.

Hyundai goes to Google’s ad tech, and drops its requirements.

Google’s AdX runs a super-fast auction in a fraction of a second to find websites that have the target customers, and GAM delivers the ad.

Google gets paid at least 35 cents on every dollar for doing that, and the website gets what’s left.

This is programmatic advertising at its most basic, and when it’s working right, then everyone wins.

🖥️ Google gets paid for the tech.

📝 The publisher gets paid for creating the content that attracted the reader.

🎯 Hyundai’s ad reaches the right potential buyer.

🚗 And the consumer gets the car they want.

Only, my chart - the one Myles was asking about - shows how this has been corrupted by the illegal ad tech monopoly that Judge Brinkema is now considering breaking up.

Now let’s explain what it shows.

We have already established that Google controls all the ads looking for customers through AdX, and it controls where they go through the taps and pipes of GAM.

But in 2026, Google wants all the ads for itself, because that’s how it sustains the double digit annual growth Wall Street demands.

Internal emails presented at the trials exposed Google executives “shaking the cushions” to increase prices to meet Wall Street goals.

But also because it needs cash to fund the colossal investments its making to stay ahead in the AI race.

That has led it to bend the rules, and this chart is the proof ☝️.

To keep as many of the ads for itself, Google launched AI Overviews to replace search.

You might remember that it was Future Media that revealed this back in 2023 when it was a secret Google patent.

Since then, Google has used AI Overviews to keep readers on its search pages by answering the questions.

Think what that does.

A person goes to search and asks what are the latest headlines in the Wall Street Journal today.

AI Overviews responds with the answers, and the reader does not need to go to the Wall Street Journal.

That means Google keeps the reader, and serves them ads, and does not need to send the reader to the WSJ, so it does not need to share its ad revenue with them.

This isn’t theoretical any more. It’s real. Here it is in action.

Self preferencing

When Google sends readers to a publisher, it’s known in the industry as referral traffic.

Since AI Overviews, referral traffic to publishers has fallen by as much as 80 per cent in the worst cases.

But Google’s not done, because it has also turned the taps and narrowed the pipes to send less of its AdX dam of ads with everyone else on the web too.

And the proof and the impact of both together is what the Network Ads chart I shared shows.

It shows Google keeping readers to itself and monetising them for growth, while simultaneously sharing less of the advertising it controls with the open web.

And the SEC filings show how it’s moving the ads that used to pay for every ad-funded website to platforms it owns, mainly search and YouTube.

The law has a term for this. It’s called self preferencing, and in Google’s court cases this was found to be anticompetitive and illegal.

For the layman though it’s a pincer movement. Google’s sending less readers and less ad revenue to everyone else and suffocating the open web, while using its monopoly to hoard it for itself.

And that is the problem that Judge Brinkema will soon offer her solution for.

Will she force Google to sell GAM and AdX. That’s what the US Department of Justice wants.

Or will she try to change Google’s behaviour so it plays nice and shares like it used to. The DoJ has bleakly called this “putting a BandAid on a severed limb”.

That’s what we are all waiting to hear. It will decide the fate of the $750 billion global digital advertising market

So it’s a great question, and thanks to Myles for sending it. Please keep them coming. There’s plenty to talk about. Stick any questions you have in the comments. 👇

This has been Future Media Explains.

PS: I asked Google’s AI Gemini to fact check this article. It said: “The post is highly accurate regarding the specific news events it references (the Venezuelan couple and the Anti-Weaponisation Fund) and correctly explains the basic mechanics of programmatic ad tech.”

Tens of thousands of advertisers have just filed a US$218 billion claim alleging Google overcharged them for search and display ads going back a decade.

And today, I’m revealing how a smart US lawyer has sidestepped a century of Fat Cat deck-stacking to put Google in the doo-doo - and how you can join in.

Welcome to new paid subs from MSN, the Financial Times in London, Taboola in Tokyo and Dentsu in Warsaw.

And hola! to new free joiners from Ecuador’s digital publisher Primicias, hey to the video team at The Washington Post, こんにちは to Tokyo’s news aggregator SmartNews, ahlan to a new face from Similarweb in Tel Aviv, and buckle in at the UC Irvine School of Law in California - you’ll enjoy this one.

Let’s dive in. It’s a corker.

Read more

Google just won a gritty court victory over two US publishers who argued that its search engine had monopolised the news industry.

The publishers’ case was subtly but critically different to the antitrust trials Google has already lost - and that was why it failed.

It’s a frustrating outcome because the judge accepts search “self-evidently benefits Google and harms online news sites”.

But he still didn’t rule Google’s conduct was illegal or legal - he just said publishers couldn’t bring the case the way they framed it.

What he did do though was tell publishers how they can bring cases that will win.

Today I’m breaking that down. Become a paid sub and you’ll hear:

Where the case fell, the market definitions to avoid, and the potholes to dodge - as well as the map to victory - and the publishers who are already following it.

Leaders at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Daily Mail, Vanity Fair, and Adobe pay because this analysis doesn’t exist anywhere else. A$15/month. A$150/year.

Upgrade to paid

And welcome to new subs joining the 37k community overnight from The Atlantic, The European Commission, Bloomberg News, The Irish Times, Edelman, the BBC and ABC.

And my thanks to this week’s sponsor Cerby. 🙏

⚽⚽⚽ The world’s biggest event World Cup 2026 is just weeks away and it will run on social media. Are your brand accounts secure?

Five weeks of peak social media activity - on accounts your IT team can’t see. Lock down your social channels with Cerby before the opening match.

It’s sponsorships like this that fund this newsletter, so check Cerby out…

Start the 30 day clock

Let’s go…

The Big Story: The secrets to make Google pay

Read more

Welcome to Future Media, and a special free newsletter today as there are major developments in the Google search antitrust case.

But before I jump in, my months-long investigation into Meta’s record on sex crimes published last week went global. Part two’s coming tomorrow.

It’s been shared 99 times, reached tens of thousands around the world, and led to an influx of influential new subs, who I’d like to call out for their work in child safety.

Welcome then to the International Justice Mission in Washington DC which combats human trafficking, slavery, violence against the poor, and other forms of abuse.

It was founded in 1997 by a former DoJ trial attorney who investigated the Rwandan genocide, and operates in 30 countries.

As well as France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, The US Department of Homeland Security, the age verification team at Yoti, and an MP and leading voice on the UK’s justice watchdog fighting for a…

Read more

The Daily Mail and 200 Gannett titles including USA Today are closer to winning damages after a US judge ruled a Google pay-off to alter its ad tech trial backfired.

This post’s a doozy, so I’m going to give you my TL;DR before handing over to a lawyer from the DoJ search trial to explain it in layman’s terms.

First, let’s welcome our first new subs of 2026 from The Washington Post, Hearst in New York, Leonardo.ai (part of Canva) in Sydney, PressReader in Vancouver, the leadership team at Pubmatic in New York, digital publisher Axios, global CMS Labrador, the Chrome team at Google, Australia’s financial regulator ASIC, outdoor ad giant JCDecaux, the UK’s Yorkshire Post, podcasters Punch Audio in Brazil, Fortune in New York City, The George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, and website wonderkids Wix. We’re now read in 98 countries. 🌎

Share

Right, let’s get to it.

The Big Story: Billion dollar boost for publishers

If you followed my coverage of Google’s ad tech trial last year, you’ll recall its lawyers pulled a rare and unusual legal stunt: They paid damages to the judge before the trial.

WTF? It seemed like a baffling thing to do at first glance, until you deciphered the intent.

You see, Google strolled into its first antitrust trial over the app store assuming people loved it, so a jury would naturally let it off.

Only that didn’t work out. At all.

So it paid to remove the risk of a jury at the ad tech trial. Only now that strategy’s in the dumpster too - and it’s put hundreds of publishers in the driving seat for a payout.

And this is why…

Read more

The end game on Google’s illegal ad-tech monopoly just moved a step closer. Closing arguments are done – and we now know we won’t get a ruling until the new year.

This trial is about ad tech. The DOJ wants Google to spin off its ad exchange (AdX) and, over time, separate Google Ad Manager from the rest of the stack.

It also wants Google’s auction machinery and data flows opened up, and money on the table to cover publishers’ costs of switching to rival tech.

It sits alongside the search case, where Google had an illegal monopoly in search and search ads, but escaped a break-up.

And the app-store case, where Google was found to have illegally monopolised apps in Android, triggering changes that are already cutting fees and opening the market.

So it’s 1:1. We’re heading into extra time – and here’s what you need to know.

First, welcome to paid subs from Digital Content Next, Newsgenie.ai, Condé Nast, the University of Canberra and Canva, among others.

Share

And hi to new subs from German multimedia…

Read more

Still celebrating its huge victory over demands to sell its Chrome browser, Google was back in court yesterday trying to unwind more of the search antitrust ruling.

It wants permission to bundle Gemini with YouTube and Maps, using their scale to turbocharge adoption of its AI.

Google has deals with Samsung, Motorola and other major phone makers requiring them to bundle its products in return for using its Android operating system.

The judge Amit Mehta raised concerns during the trial that this type of bundling would give Google “leverage” to create a new monopoly in AI.

But Google attorney John Schmidtlein told him this week that Gemini should be allowed to be bundled as competition in the AI market was still emerging.

Microsoft already bundles its AI with Office and its Edge browser. Meta does the same with its AI integrations in WhatsApp and Instagram.

Bloomberg reported Schmidtlein told the court that “there’s no notion that Google has t…

Read more

Breaking: If you have infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters, then stir in some applied mathematics and time they’ll eventually type the works of Shakespeare.

That’s how the analogy goes.

Similarly, if you have all the lawyers and all the money, you can appeal until the cows come home and you might (just) have a chance of winning.

Right?

Only wrong.

Bloomberg has just reported:

“Google lost a US Supreme Court bid to pause major changes to its Play app store in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite-maker Epic Games.

“The Supreme Court, without explanation, denied Google’s request to temporarily put part of a lower court ruling on hold.

“The company sought to block a requirement that it allow rival app stores access to its app library and bar it from blocking downloads of competitors in Google Play.”

The row is over the court’s rul…

Read more

It’s been 987 days since the US Department of Justice filed its landmark antitrust case to dismantle Google’s ad tech monopoly. Since then, Google has banked US$823 billion.

As it stands, Google is a three-times monopolist - in ad tech, search ads and apps - and Judge Leonie Brinkema is now deciding what to do to fix it.

She will deliver a ruling before Christmas that will determine the economics and direction of global digital advertising.

Yesterday, the final word in the trial went to rising star of the publishing industry The Daily Mail’s Matthew Wheatland. He’s no mug, and that’s why he didn’t miss.

Read more

One summer morning in August 1973, masked gunman Jan-Erik Olsson stormed into the Kreditbanken bank and fired a volley of machine gun bullets into the ceiling.

What began as a hold-up escalated into a six-day siege that would change psychology, policing, and the English language forever.

As police massed outside, he took four hostages - three women and a man.

What happened next amazed police and the public. The hostages’ sided with their captor.

One - 23-year-old bank clerk Kristin Enmark - became the most vivid example of this paradox.

She spent 131 hours locked in the bank vault with Olsson, where she was threatened, tied up, and constantly under the shadow of death.

Yet when Olsson allowed her to call Sweden’s Prime Minister, Olof Palme, she told him she trusted the gunman more than the police. She even stood before police snipers to protect him.

When the hostages were finally released unharmed, she continued to defend him in interviews, insisting he’d shown her kindness and humanity.

…

Read more

The world has many great mysteries. Big Foot. The Bermuda Triangle. Why autocorrect thinks my name’s Ticky. And why Google’s ad avails are always so very wrong.

Yesterday, in court, Google was finally forced to try to explain itself, under oath, with a US$790 billion digital ad empire on the line.

Welcome to the Future Media newsletter, and hi to new subs overnight from Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, CNN in New York, Bauer in London, super-cool influencer agency HUNTER in LA (🤙 I’m kinda big deal so talk to my agent), The Canadian Press, global media agency Mindshare, Aussie airline Qantas, contextual ad leaders Seedtag (founded by former Googlers), streamer Paramount+ in London, Southern Cross Austereo in Australia (good luck with the Seven West merger) and two from politics.

Hello to independent advisory City Strategies whose founder was New York City’s first Chief Technology Officer and the other from the Office of the Prime Minister of Australia. G’day!

Now back to Google’s opening and t…

Read more

Google is meeting its moment.

On one side of the Atlantic, the US Department of Justice is locked in courtroom theatre trying to convince a judge to dismantle its illegal ad monopoly.

But Europe isn’t bothering with theatrics. Brussels has passed laws that mean it doesn’t need to wait. It just needs to decide.

And the deadline for that decision is November 5. Bonfire night. A date famed across half a Millennia for delivering fireworks.

Here are the updates from day three of the remedies trial… but it might not have the impact we’ve all been expecting if Europe decides to jump the gun.

Read more

A Google lawyer revealed on cross that its ad tech handles eight million ad requests every second.

That’s 252 trillion calls per year - or 30,000 for every human on the planet.

We already know from financial filings that Google banks US$1 billion-a-day.

And witnesses testifying against Google all agreed that it handles ads seamlessly, creating the backbone of the digital economy.

The problem is that Google has morphed over the years from being a benefactor for organising the open web into a monopoly that now prioritises profit over product.

That’s led to a lack of transparency, super-high fees, the defunding of journalism, a collapse in innovation, and forced the world’s advertisers to pay more.

The proof’s in Google’s accounts, which reveals it syphoning 92¢ of every ad dollar from publishers and the open web to its owned and operated search and YouTube platforms.

That’s where it makes its bucks, delights the 0.001 per cent, and drives five per cent of the US stock market.

And you thought it was a search engine. Pah!

Despite this, Google claims the web is dying. It sees no further margin growth in display ads and wants to refocus on chasing AI’s trillions.

What we are hearing in court is from those who believe there’s still an open web worth saving. They’re demanding a chance.

This is what this case is turning out to be all about.

And the judge gave a glimpse of her thinking yesterday. She snapped at Google, ordering it to bring engineers to court to explain how hard a break-up might be.

These are the highlights from day two…

Before we dive in, welcome to new subs from Australia’ anti-corruption watchdog the ACCC, digital consultancy Adv Media Lab in Urbania, Italy, the BBC in London, Australia’s Science Media Centre, the World Bank team in Kenya, The Sydney Film Festival, business publisher Forbes in Boston, the ad team behind Nespresso at Nestlé, indie agency Nunn Media, France’s Prisma Media which publishes to 40 million people daily, Deloitte in LA, and many more…

Sponsor message

AI search is hitting publishers hard. Revenue strategies are shifting fast - towards commercial content, video, newsletters, sponsorships, and contextual takeovers - while performance budgets (CPC/CPA) remain but are tighter and more selective.

That’s where CleverAds steps in. We help publishers plug these gaps with off-network strategies that drive real, measurable growth. Our solutions are built to power the channels that matter most.

Find out more

Now back to the trial, where three issues have become very clear in the opening days of this two-week trial.

The first is that all the witnesses and the Justice Department want Google’s ad tech broken up.

Every witness said it can’t be trusted to be honest. The DoJ branded it “a recidivist monopolist” and anything other than break up was “a Band-Aid on a severed limb”.

The second is that it won’t be too hard to break it up, by making AdX and DFP open source, despite Google’s claims that will break the web.

But it was the third that caught my eye. Every witness said they had not seen Google change its behaviour at all since it was convicted as a monopolist.

Jed Dederick, CRO at The Trade Desk said Google’s grip had made ad innovation “anaemic” and people had lost trust.

As a personal aside, the CEO of a multi-billion market cap media giant told me recently: “One thing we do know amid all this change is that ads will not be our future.”

Why, I asked? Ads were 80 per cent of publisher revenue before Google. It’s not ads that are the problem; it’s Google’s monopoly of those ads. Is that fair, I asked?

He replied with a sigh: “No, but that’s not going to change is it?”

Well, that’s what this trial is about.

Dederick said Google’s unrelenting profit motive had removed the transparency the market needed to optimise performance, which left advertising clients blind.

But he was more optimistic than my editor friend: Trust would return once the blockage is removed.

And the main beneficiary would be journalism. “They’re starving,” he said. “They just need food.”

Big Tech on Trial also quoted from testimony from Luke Lambert from Omnicom Confluence. It reported:

Lambert’s company’s clients are advertisers. They want to know where their advertising dollars go.

Whatever does not go to the websites where their ads land goes to fees, and Google takes fees far above industry norms.

He has to be able to justify to clients what was done with their money and what happened in the auctions where they bid.

But Google’s lack of transparency makes that hard. That’s why behavioural remedies are inadequate.

Not only is the Final Auction Logic a black box, but the whole system is too complex to identify all the opportunities for manipulating this or that part of it.

As long as Google has the power to rig things in its favour, it will find ways to keep its take rate up and his clients’ margins down. Divestiture is necessary.

So, how hard is it?

The narrative coming through thick and fast is that every witness so far believes digital advertising can only be saved if Google is forced to hand it over.

And that was not lost on judge Leonie Brinkema who finally tired of Google’s shenanigans towards the end of the day.

In the court known as the rocket docket for pushing cases through, she hit the hurry up button.

Bring me technical people to show me whether a break-up is feasible, she demanded.

But but but blustered Google’s lawyer Bill Isaacson, before judge Brinkema leapt in.

“Quite frankly, I’ve been giving you a pretty strong hint. I’m not finding a lot of this information terribly helpful,” she said.

“It’s nice to see a bit of what’s going on in the industry (but) frankly, I heard a lot about it in the previous trial.

“Where your time should be spent is on the experts, and I’m very interested in seeing the evidence of what Google thinks is technically possible.

“That’s the heart of the evidence that I’m interested in.”

And responding to Google’s filibustering, she added: “This is window dressing, so, I’m letting you know. Let’s keep this moving because we need to finish.”

Google lawyer Isaacson responded: “Your Honour, I’m stuck in the position of cross-examining the window dressing whose testimony…”

Brinkema interrupted: “It’s window dressing.”

“…it will end up in the proposed findings of fact,” Isaacson added, before Judge Brinkema cut him off. “You don’t need to worry about window dressing. You really don’t.”

You can understand Google’s high-flying legal eagles want to go slow. They’re earning US$24,000-a-day.

To close, we started and finished with big numbers yesterday, so let’s remind ourselves of some others we’ve learned during this two-year trial.

1. Google controls 91 per cent of the ad server market.

2. It has 13 months of data on two billion people.

3. Leaked emails show executives boasting only an Act of God can dislodge it.

4. Google generated US$350 million in 2024.

5. 87.5 per cent of it came from ads.

6. That US$1 billion a day is enough to end world poverty.

7. Its auctions control 87 per cent of global ad demand.

8. It delivers 13 billion ads a day to publishers worldwide.

9. Nine in 10 global publishers rely on it.

10. As do four in five of the world’s advertisers.

11. Two fifths of global video ads are traded there.

12. Google diverts 92¢ on every ad dollar to search and YouTube.

13. Just eight per cent goes to publishers and the open web.

14. Four fifths of News Corp’s ad revenue comes through GAM.

15. It’s three fifths at The Daily Mail.

16. The Mail says quitting would jeopardise US$4 million-a-year.

17. News Corp says it would risk $9 million.

18. News and the Mail both cut thousands of jobs as ad revenue fell.

19. USA Today fired two thirds of its 33,000 employees.

20. 55 per cent of all journalists have been laid off in the past 20 years.

21. Now half of America has no local news coverage.

22. Meanwhile, Google hiked prices to 36 per cent to hit Wall Street goals.

23. Its fees have risen to 3x that of its rivals.

24. That’s 10x the fees of regulated firms, like credit cards.

25. Google also spent $400 million buying an ad rival, then shut it.

26. It now syphons ~$2.7 million a day from publishers, and

27. Banks the earnings of all publishers combined every three days.

See you next time…

The final act that will decide whether publishers can rely on advertising to fund their digital future has begun in a courtroom in the US.

Over the next two weeks, a judge will crawl over the Justice Department’s calls for Google’s ad tech to be sold and opened up - and Google’s claim that doing so will kill the web.

The outcome will decide the future of how US$757 billion in digital advertising is bought, sold, measured, distributed, and shared.

Today, I begin the coverage.

First, join me in welcoming new subs from Google, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting in the UK, several new sign ups from TikTok in New York and Sydney, the sponsorships lead at Diageo, the UK’s Daily Mirror, The Guardian in the US, McKinsey and Co in New York, UK broadcasters ITV and Channel 4, The Boston Globe, the Toronto office of Publicis, the strategy team at Metro in the UK, Dentsu in Australia, European culture and arts broadcaster ARTE, marketing agency Collexia in Tokyo, cinema supplier AbelCine in Broklyn NY, Australia’s NSW Government and the South Australian Tourism among others.

Here’s what happened - and the back story - from day one of the Google ad tech antitrust remedies trial that will decide the future of digital advertising…

Read more

I’ve been flooded with questions over the past 48 hours, and I’ll do my best to structure the answers into a narrative. It won’t all get done today. It will take time.

Over the weekend, many had time to reflect on Judge Amit Mehta’s decision to slap three-time monopolist Google on the wrist, and hand it the whip hand to the future.

Many sent messages to share disappointment. A few sent snarky notes with versions of I told you so. But those closest to the law had the analysis we should focus on.

Foremost is Jonathan Kanter, the former Assistant Attorney General for the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, who fought and won all three cases.

He’s stood firm and this morning laid out in The New York Times this morning what he thinks, where the ruling fails, and why publishers still have another chance.

Before I get there, join me in welcoming to news subs over the weekend from Reddit, The Washington Post, BBC Verify, the Singapore office of multinational sports management group I…

Read more

Who’d have thought it would come down to a frog and two lily pads.

Google’s boiling frog playbook crushed publishing, suffocated the open web, and bent advertising to craft an enduring multi-billion-dollar monopoly.

Now an antitrust judge says that’s barely worth a penalty because search is old tech, AI is the future - and competition has already leapt to a new lily pad.

It’s never a dull day at the DOJ, but dark humour aside, this is a brutal and deeply unfair ruling for publishing.

It’s devastating for consumers and advertisers, and it won’t inspire new rivals in search or search ads.

Instead, it entrenches trillion-dollar bagmen, shepherding them into fresh AI monopolies that will be back in court before long.

Meanwhile, consumers and advertisers will pay more, Google will keep predatory pricing, and another generation of start-ups will be starved of opportunity.

Today’s post breaks down what just happened and what it means for publishers, marketers, consumers, Big Tech, AI, growth and c…

Read more

Welcome to new subs this week from The Guardian, the University of Technology in Sydney, Canadian VC Pennant, British news agency PA Media, the agents of (my lookalike) Jason Statham, as well as Ben Affleck, Leo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman and Justin Timberlake SSM&L in LA, Hearst in Washington, strategic marketers Strivenn in the UK, Canadian B2B publisher Newcom, PayPal, and many more.

Share with your friends

In a few days we will receive a judge’s ruling on how he thinks Google’s monopoly on search should be resolved.

Top of a long list of demands is to break the company up, by handing over the Chrome to a new custodian. Ecosia became the latest to put its hand up this week.

Other remedies include forcing Google to separate search from AI training, and for a multi-billion fund to be handed to publishers to pay for the disruption.

In combination, this creates a chaotic outlook for media owners, boards, employees, and investors. It’s frightening, and significant, and happening soon.

Last week, I gathered leaders from hundreds of publishers worldwide together in a series of calls across America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, to put it in perspective.

Today, I am sharing it here because building a better future can only happen if we build on the foundations of understanding where we are.

And that begins with Google losing all three of its antitrust trials…

Read more

Google’s antitrust battles may not be over with the former head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust unit saying its $36 billion YouTube empire may be next in the crosshairs.

Jonathan Kanter says legal opinions around Big Tech have shifted, meaning the monopoly era is over and “abuses will now be addressed swiftly and decisively”.

In an exclusive chat with Future Media and Monopoly Report podcast host , Kanter said Google’s search and ad tech losses had set a precedent.

“There are legitimate questions about whether there should be more cases, or whether the cases we’ve had should have been broader,” he says.

“Where does YouTube fit in? Where does AdMob fit in? To be more comprehensive - to really address the problem - you need to consider all those ingredients.

“I’m hopeful the legal principles we’ve established will carry over and future attempts to abuse market power will be addressed swiftly and decisively.”

That will send a chill down the spines at Mountain View where the trilliona…

Read more

I want to begin with a hat tip to my Future Media podcast co-host for landing an exclusive interview for the ages… 🫡 This is one not to be missed.

It’s now clear that the fate of publishing and news will not be decided by well-intentioned editors in newsrooms or the suited n’ booted execs in the boardroom.

They’ve been out-gunned, out-run, out-thought, out-manoeuvred, and out-spent by Big Tech - and exposed as strategically handcuffed by a need for short-term wins.

Fortunately, someone else has our back.

The fix has already been nine tenths done by regulators and judges - and none has had more impact than Jonathan Kanter, the ex-antitrust chief at the US Department of Justice.

History will remember that it wasn’t 20 years of whining by indignant newspaper chiefs that finally got Google’s ass whipped in court.

It was Kanter’s energy and leadership, which …

Read more

You see, the Brits are a proud race, civilised over Millennia of fine tea, who know that the simple rule is that you don’t fuck with the law, Elton, McCartney, or the Palace.

So far, media scrutiny has focused on the high-profile legal wranglings against Google in the US and European courts, but the Brits have been busy behind the scenes.

, a privacy lawyer, and I have spent years talking about the competition trials taking place on this pod.

But as I’m increasingly prone to point out, only four percent of the world’s population lives in the US, while this is a global issue with implications for four billion people.

NB: America’s the tiddler in red… 🔍🗽👇

Today’s pod focuses on one of the leading UK lawyers in this space, Tim Cowan, chairman of the antitrust practice at Preiskel and Co.

He represents 500 clients across media, tech, and telecom, and advises the UK regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority.

He also chairs a group called the Movement for an Open Web, which is advising Britain’s House of Lords on digital policy and online markets.

Now, I was travelling for this ep and unable to join in, but Alan and Tim take us on a journey to the heart of what’s next for the world wide web in a post-Google world.

Their conversation covers the future of journalism, who gets to run Chrome, the fate of local news, AI, copyright, online advertising, free speech, democracy, and more.

The theme is: The car’s going to crash. We know Google’s a monopolist. It’s been one for a very long time. What are we going to do about it? Who, when, and how?

Tim’s insights include:

A window is opening for the news industry to build a better Chrome.

“You can have a different user interface for a niche market, like news. That will lead to high levels of differentiation and competition.”

How Google and Apple have worked together to limit innovation.

“That agreement is just blatantly anti-competitive and has to go.”

The arrival of a massive new tech boom.

“We can confidently look forward to massive economic benefits if we open these markets to competition.”

Even Google will benefit from the coming revolution.

“It will lead to change. Change will lead to innovation. And this is quite a considerable change, so that will release a lot of energy for everyone.”

The White House is being more aggressive around enforcement than the last.

“Google and Meta are hurting innovation in everything. It sees that. Remove them, and greater inventions have a chance.”

And the UK’s unique legal system might break Google up before the US.

“The UK’s really fast while the US allows appeals forever. It’s not like that here. I can see a day where the US is still going through it, but we have had more bite.”

Oh, and for fun, I thought I’d ask the AI to write a song for Elton about his battle. It’s not to fuck with him (I’m a Brit, I’d never do that.)

Think of it as Rocket(man) fuel…🕺

Now, go for it Elton, you good thing!

🎵 Silicon Soul
Lyrics by Ricky Sutton, with AI, sung in the Key of Elton John.

[Verse 1]
I wrote it down with fire,
On a page that no-one sees,
A melody of memory
That poured straight out of me.
But now it lives in circuits,
Fed into damn machines,
They polished off my heartbeat
Then sold it like a dream.

[Pre-Chorus]
There’s a thief in the wires,
A ghost in the stream,
And it's singing my song
With a silicon gleam…

[Chorus]
Oh, where did the soul go?
Trapped in code that I don't know,
My verses, my lines -
They’ve been copied a thousand times.
And it plays in the dark night,
On a loop that has no name,
I'm just a voice in this engine,
But the heart is still the same.

[Verse 2]
They said it's just the future,
“Progress,” they then declared,
But they never asked permission —
Just scraped me 'cause I'm there.
Now lawyers speak in riddles,
While justice hides its face,
And the art becomes a number
In some soulless algo race.

[Pre-Chorus]
There’s a candle still burning
Where the real songs begin —
But the flame flickers low
In an odd digital wind…

[Chorus]
Oh, where did the soul go?
Trapped in code that I don't know,
My rhythm, my rhyme —
Replaced by design.
And it plays on a platform,
No credits, no shame,
I'm just fuel for the engine
In someone else’s name.

[Bridge – Piano Solo, soaring like Elton in ’75]
Can you hear the echo fading?
It once danced on vinyl skies…
Now it’s chopped and trained and traded
While the ink inside me cries.

[Final Chorus – Soft, aching, gospel-tinged]
Oh, where did the soul go?
Trapped in a code I don’t know…
They say it’s innovation,
But to me it feels like theft —
In a world that's full of music,
With no more humans left.

[Outro – Whispered, piano fading out]
Am I just a ghost in the chorus,
A name left in the dust?
And who are you left to love…
When the star you knew won't rust?

You’ve been an amazing great audience. Thank you, and goodnight.