Welcome to Scotch and Watch, the lively weekly chat over a whisky between former Bauer CEO Chris Duncan and I on what’s breaking and shaking in tech and media.
It’s the most fun you can have while charting the collapse of a $13 trillion industry, so tune in and join the convo by downloading the Substack app and you’ll get an alert. We’re on every Friday at 5pm Sydney time, that’s 8am in London.
And we’re looking for a whisky sponsor BTW as we’re taking Scotch and Watch on a global tour shortly.
Journos have been known to enjoy a drink 🥃 🥳 🥴 so please drop me a line below. Slainte.
Now…
…not sure if you noticed, but it’s been kind of a big couple of days.
Chris and I were super chuffed as we prepared for this pod. We’d done our homework, and we were across the brief. What could go wrong.
The plan was to dive into the first week of the Meta antitrust trial, but as with all best laid plans, it fell apart faster than my mate Matt’s ‘76 Lada.
Because the guilty verdict on Google’s ad tech landed. BOOM!
It made Google a “once, twice, three times a monopolist” as one of the Department of Justice joked on the last day, invoking the incomparable karaoke king Lionel Richie.
BTW, you can find Lionel (and my karaoke go-to Green Day) on Spotify and Apple, right next to this Future Media podcast…
But back to Google’s legal woes.
One conviction is an oversight. Two’s a trend, but three, wow that means Google’s reputation is tarnished forever.
Chris and I had predicted a week ago that Judge Leonie Brinkema would choose this moment to drop her bombshell ruling, and we were right
It means Google:
Is a monopolist in the App Store and charging super high fees of 30 per cent and more. That’s going to be dealt with.
Is a monopolist in search, sending traffic to itself for profit and starving the rest of the open web. The penalties are a break-up and the loss of the Chrome browser.
Now it’s a monopolist in ad tech, starving publishers, stealing from the market, hiding unfair prices, and now it may lose GAM and its $300 billion ad stack.
The verdicts will rewrite digital for four billion people - but not everyone’s happy. The ground-shaking decision has terrified many, none more so than news media.
Many woke to the news and their first thought was: Holy shit, what now?
Chris and I discuss how the chaos will be destabilising in the short term but will deliver a better outcome and more competition around premium digital ads.
For Google though, the future’s a whole lot more frightening with Brinkema joining the other judges in condemning its decision to delete screeds of evidence.
I broke a story in January revealing that:
Attorney Generals across 17 US States have brought a new suit, alleging Google:
Deleted millions of pages of key evidence “deliberately and in bad faith”
Trained staff to destroy evidence to avoid scrutiny from antitrust regulators.
Urged staff to use off the record Google Chat and then set history to off.
The States allege that the chats “contained evidence on intent, deception…”
96 per cent of CEO Sundar Pichai’s chats were destroyed.
Another four million chats from key execs were also wiped every year.
Despite Google making assurances in January 2020, it was keeping evidence.
The suit is signed by the Attorneys Generals of Texas, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah.
Someone from Google might very well end up in jail, which would be just peachy.
Chris and I then discuss what will happen now as judges get together next week to decide how to break-up Google for spare parts.
Selling Chrome, axing the $26.3 billion backdoor deal it did with Apple to steal the mobile ad market, and cracking apart GAM and AdX are all near certainties.
There will be more too. I’ll be posting a humdinger on this tomorrow.
That’ll create new winners, new types of ads, and potentially make GAM free to use for everyone, with Google’s ad demand, audience data, and analytics thrown in for free.
The Trade Desk and others saw their stocks spike on the verdict, while Google shed billions (again) as its toxic business model was exposed.
Chris also notes that it might be a good time to buy property in Ireland as prices are about to collapse as Google’s tax hidey-hole takes a blow.
I quite liked the look of Foxrock Manor. I’ll give Ann-Marie a call. 🤙 🇮🇪 ☘️
But Google’s loss still feels like publishing’s pain - unless it can finally get its shit together, herd the cats, and king-make the next winner in premium advertising.
Remember TikTok? Chris and I discussed how its investment in building a simple-to-use ad tech stack led to $4 billion in revenue in one year. Remember this?
Now we discuss radical ideas on how the publishing industry could do the same and build its own ad stack based on premium content, audiences and data.
It’s all change, so get in there. Grab a scotch, or a coffee depending on where you are, because whatever you think you know, and everything you knew, is over.
Change is happening right now. Let’s win.
And download the app so you won’t miss the next block-rocking ep coming Friday.
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