How antitrust regulators intend to sell of Google's ad tech

It’s 855 days since the Department of Justice announced it was going to break Google’s vice-like grip on ad tech and end its $350 billion money-making monopoly.

Tens of thousands of pages of evidence and internal mails were then revealed before OG judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Google an illegal monopoly last September.

Busted…

But that’s been a lot to take in, and with the repercussions being so serious and ground-shaking, my co-host

Alan Chapell

and I decided it was time to do a recap.

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This is the latest episode from the fast-growing Future Media podcast stable. You can tune in here or on Spotify, Apple, Art19, or wherever you get your pods.

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And welcome to another rush of new subs overnight from The Dow Jones in London and from News Australia in Sydney, as well as US publishing giant Dotdash Meredith in New York, the C-suite at Comcast, the Local Media Consortium representing 5,000+ newspapers, radio, TV, and online news outlets across the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico, America’s ABC News, more subs from Bauer Media in London, The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, more friends from The Trade Desk (sitting in pole position to benefit from Google’s demise), Adzen.ai designed to monetise AI for publishers, Conde Nast, Canva, The Indian Express in Noida, IT consultants Cognizant in New Jersey, five new joiners from The Associated Press based in San Diego, Stockholm, and Washington DC, award-winning publisher app developer Twipe in Leuven, Belgium, working with renowned pubs including Le Monde and De Standaard, unified communications solution LinkUs in Argentina, media monitoring and analytics outfit Newswhip in New York, AWS in Boston, content syndication platform Nordot in Paris, FandomIQ in the UK…

And a flood of new subs from my besties, global tech services team Wizeline in Madrid, Spain, Austin, Texas, Mexico City, Zapopan, Jalisco, Querétaro, and Guadalajara, and Bogota in Colombia… and if that’s not a road trip, I dunno what is. 🚘

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On my flight back from New York at the weekend I decided to have some fun visualising this rapidly-growing audience with Flourish, which is part of Aussie design rocketship Canva.

What would Future Media’s audience and consumption look like broken down by audience, country, habit, and by paid v free sub? It’s entrancing…

Now, use this moment to invite your friends, and let’s keep building this movement for change and create a better media future, together.

Back to this week’s pod and explaining how the US government plans to break up Google’s illegal monopoly on global digital advertising.

This should be catnip for every media boardroom, but I’ve been shocked over the past three weeks travelling the world meeting with media leaders just how little is known.

And not just about what’s already happened in court (it’s not too late, you can read in on all of that here) but about what’s coming next.

• This will shake the foundations of every newsroom on the planet to its core.

• History books will record this as a moment that sense won over dollars, and

• A decision that rewrote the lawbooks and saved the open web from collapse.

That’s what this article, and the supporting podcast, are about.

And to make it as useful, and as easily accessible as possible, we’ve broken it into sections.

• How the government aims to sell off Google’s ad exchange AdX and who will make the decision who it goes to and how.

• How the ubiquitous ad server DFP - aka GAM - is flogged off, and again who will choose the new owner…

• The three phase plan for the break-up, when, how and what will happen.

• The processes that will force Google to reveal the inner workings of AdWords and DV360 and then invite rivals to use all its coolest tools.

• How tens of billions are being harvested from Google’s earnings to subsidise the heavy costs publishers will incur in the switchover, and

• Who will be appointed as the anti-retaliation cop to ensure that a wounded Google doesn’t go down swinging.

Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting all your career for? If it isn’t, you’re in the wrong job, because I’ll also be calling out some hard truths that are being forgotten.

And calling BS on some myths that publishers are hiding behind.

I’ll start with this one.

Google has BROKEN THE LAW. It is an ILLEGAL MONOPOLY.

Time and time again, media leaders who really must know better have warned me to be careful about my language. It’s competition law, they say, not illegal.

• Only that’s wrong.

• It’s ALL the law.

• And Google broke it.

• It created a $350 billion market by breaking the law.

• And a $1.7 trillion value on the back of it.

It’s not me saying that.

The DoJ repeats the word illegal six times in its remedies document. And unlawful another 11.

Any executive who continues to hide behind the lazy and inept claim that Google committed some minor misdemeanour, is going to be called out.

The future will not recognise Stockholm Syndrome as an excuse.

So, this article and pod have been painstakingly put together with considerable care so you can refer back to it again and again to discover:

• What happened.

• What’s being done about it, and

• How you can rebuild for the post-Google ad world that’s coming.

OK, let’s get to it. This is what you need to know, and what you need to do. No excuses. Do or die… #LFG