Google's pirates push publishing down the plank

#316: The search monopolist reports a $90 billion quarter but shares less with publishers than at any time in the past five years... Arghhhh!

Google is an illegal profiteer three-times over that deliberately sank publishing, the open web, and its rivals for profit, but its hungry pirates just keep bagging the gold.

Alphabet’s first quarter revenues are just out and reveal a 12 per cent rise to top $90 billion.

That influx of gold was a welcome relief as Google’s lost 17 per cent in value since the start of the year amid antitrust break-ups, tariffs, and fierce AI competition.

Deep in the numbers though was yet another fall in revenue for publishers who rely on Google’s programmatic ad network.

Google’s now sharing less than it has in half a decade, as it takes its foot off supporting advertising and the open web to self-preference its own AI initiatives.

And we saw for the first time yesterday just how much work its AI Gemini has to do to close the gap on its arch-rival, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Internal Google data surfaced in the break-up court showed Gemini had 35 million daily users last month, which is, like, 20,000 leagues behind ChatGPT’s 160 million.

The Google slide presented in court as evidence

The Department of Justice leapt on it to argue that remedies are essential to stop Google using its scale to dominate AI and hamper rivals like GPT getting ahead.

The DoJ’s David Dahlquist urged Judge Amit Mehta to act, prompting Google’s lawyer John Schmidtlein to deadpan: ChatGPT’s doing just fine.

Ha. Gotcha.

In other evidence, Yahoo threw its hat into the ring to take over Chrome yesterday, joining OpenAI and Perplexity in the mix. I still think publishing should make a play.

And with that, welcome to new subs from the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, Dell computers, Australian broadcaster SBS, Axiom in Tampa, Florida, GroupM in Paris, publisher ad co Eye/o in Munich, Sydney M&A team Birchgrove, publisher ad platform Broadstreet Ads in New Jersey, and the Magazine Innovation Center at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, among 254 others.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured bear during a hunting trip in Mississippi. The incident was turned into a political cartoon - and inspired a Brooklyn shop owner to create the first Teddy Bear. Now you know.

Let’s kick off with Google’s latest financials…