Welcome to Google - who we now know are keen subscribers to this podcast after they talked about it in the ad tech break-up trial in the US this week.
G’day Googs - you doing good? 👋 I’m genuinely delighted to have you here because you have a big part to play in the future of AI, digital content and the open web.
Publishers don’t want to kill the open web. We don’t want to ignore AI. We want to be part of the future. And we know you need to be part of that too.
That means that we both have the most to gain by working together and ending the enmity, so shall we give it a go?
Seeing you fighting antitrust in court this week I couldn’t help but hear the echoes of Microsoft chairman Brad Smith’s Six Phases of Antitrust Grief.
He wrote these after his experiences working as a Microsoft lawyer as it was broken up in an antitrust action 25 years ago.
Stage 1: Ugh, Government doesn’t understand tech. Let’s ignore it. It’ll go away,
Stage 2: Why are they still pushing? Don’t they appreciate the value we bring?
Stage 3: OK, so it’s actually going to court. Ridiculous! We’ll obviously win.
Stage 4: Umm, we’re losing. Let’s settle so that nothing too painful happens.
Stage 5: OMG, we lost and this is really going to hurt. Didn’t see that coming.
Stage 6: Wow, it’s over and we’re still in business. There’s life after all this. Yay!
OK, that’s not verbatim his version, but that was the tone of his wisdom. Full version is here for paid subs.
And his advice for Big Tech leaders facing antitrust today is: Get to stage six as soon as you can. And Microsoft remains the second most valuable company in history.
Amazing…
Now, before we get to a great pod this week, let me welcome a flood of new subs over the past two days from Cloudflare, Google, Instagram, Amazon Web Services, linkby, AirTrunk, Australia’s ABC, class action lawyers Maurice Blackburn, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, TikTok, and many more.
With an upgrade to a paid sub, you get full access to my work - the stuff Google was interested in - for $2.60 a week. Can you afford to miss out? I’ve also got a group discounts running.
We’re off to see the Wizard in Oz
Come see me and my trusty straight man
as we tear up the stage at SXSW Sydney next week, unveiling our new headline act: The Yellow Brick Code.The Wizard of Oz hides a warning about power, politics, and illusion. We reimagine L Frank Baum’s allegory through today’s lens, exposing how Big Tech mirrors Oz’s deceptive wizards amid AI hype and soaring valuations.
Turns out we ain’t in Kansas any more. Love to see you there.
Back to Scotch and Watch.
and I walk through a practical roadmap for publishers to protect their content and monetise in the AI era.The takeaway is to stop treating AI as an existential threat, stop moaning about it, and treat it as a strategic accelerant to build a new market that values journalism.
At the epicentre of this is marketplaces - a smart way for publishers to protect their content and charge a fee for it whenever it is used.
I’ve built a global AI marketplace before. I launched Oovvuu in 2014 and expanded it to almost a hundred countries. I tell the story in this deep dive.
And two years ago, I proposed to extend that vision to a pay-per-crawl model called Airgap, which I road-tested with 16,000 global publishers. More here.
Models like this are now beginning to emerge from big players. Microsoft and Cloudflare both revealed plans in recent weeks, so today we’re giving them a review.
Chris and I also explore why this might be the moment for marketplaces, as antitrust judges sharpen their gavels and the world lurches towards copyright protections.
My belief is that AI will only achieve mass adoption if people can trust it, and geeks sucking junk out of 4Chan to train their models cheaply is doomed to fail.
With trillions at stage, and publishers the most reliable supply of grounded, accountable information, the leverage is there to create valuable marketplaces.
Marketplaces can realign incentives, find market value, reward the best, surface the most valuable content, deliver reliable AI while returning journalism to sustainability.
All the pieces feel like they are coming together, but this will only happen if publishers can remember what life was like before they handed their fate to tech giants for promises and pennies.
That means it’s time to stop moaning and get on with the job. The future’s happening whether publishers like it or not. It’s time to decide whether to board the AI train.
Hope you enjoy this episode.
The rage on stage returns
We’ll be talking about this and more when Scotch and Watch takes the rage on stage live at the FIPP publisher world congress in Madrid later this month.
We can’t wait to add yet another global destination to our footprint after sell-out shows in New York, London, Paris and Australia in the past few months.
If you’re looking for fresh new thought leadership for your exec offsite, or a memorable way to open your conference, get in touch. We have more than enough stories to go around :) Slainté.
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