Only an Act of God can beat Google, ad chief boasts
Emails reveal ad executives believed its ad grip was as powerful as the New York Stock Exchange, and set out to crush rivals...
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Not that long ago, landing a job at Google was a dream. Cutting-edge tech, funky offices, free lunches, fat expenses and bragging rights. What was not to like?
All you needed to do was be just a teeny-weeny bit evil, and willing to look the other way every now and again.
Many journalism colleagues of mine sold out to Google’s dollars. Some later tried to convince me they were doing the right thing. I even considered it for a hot moment.
But over time they stopped reaching out. In recent months, mutual friends have told me that they have grown to loathe their jobs. One even developed clinical depression.
Another came to me for a job, moaning they’d been betrayed when they were fired, before supping coffee and revealing the strategy to cripple the market.
Oh, how I listened.
What we have all learned - together and separately - was that each of them was just a monkey in Google’s money-making-mangle.
Apparently, being an automaton for a robot-run ad monopoly wasn’t in the job description. Whodathought…
I liked Matt Stoller’s analysis in his Substack, Big, when he wrote: “Google’s executives are tired of being punching bags.
“Already, they have tried to buy two different companies this year for $20 billion+ apiece and gotten rejected both times.
“Judges are routinely taking them to task for bad document handling, and so the place is now likely crawling with cautious lawyers.
“The bad press is routine and overwhelming. Executives are distracted. The jeering over its missteps on AI are embarrassing, and it’s no longer as cool to work there.”
Ah, the court of karma is in session. Suckers.
Day three of the antitrust trial gave the world its deepest look yet into the cancerous heart of this Google’s machine.
Even executives and engineers testified to the court that they hated what they saw once they were on the inside.
Top of the list was Google’s VP of display and video ads Eisar Lipkovitz. With that job, he had a golden ticket to wealth and power, but he baulked at the culture.
“I was trying to do the right thing. The machine won. I lost,” he said. “Google is a very strange organization.”
He had the temerity to recommend Google cut the amount it charged for its ad tech so rivals could survive. Instead, he said Google ran a “dirty auction”.
The decision was “made by people I no longer want to work with”, he told the court, and he left.
The winner takes all culture that derailed his career was exposed in internal mails from Google’s former ad chief, revealed in court by the Department of Justice.
In them, President of Ads David Rosenblatt wrote that Google’s ownership of all sides of the ad tech market made it as powerful as global stock markets, and able to “crush rivals”.
Remember this chart? I created it to show that Big Tech had enough money to solve world poverty. Rosenblatt figured it was enough to starve the competition.
It’s all about perspectives I guess, and Rosenblatt nailed his colours to the mast in his mails in 2009: “We’ll be able to crush the other networks and that’s our goal,” he said.
We heard during Google’s trial for running a search monopoly, that lawyers trained execs on what they should say, and how they should delete chat messages.
Looks like Rosenblatt didn’t get that memo.
“We’re both Goldman and NYSE (New York Stock Exchange)” Reuters quoted from his mails. “Google has created what’s comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange.
“In other words, we’ll do to display what Google did to search.”
Publishers and advertisers that didn’t want to use Google’s ad tech faced a “nightmare” as it “takes an act of God” to switch to rivals, he boasted.
Ask the News Corp ad chief who testified yesterday that she was held “hostage” by Google’s “slow and clunky” ad tech and derided as “emotional” and “unproductive” when she complained.
Stephanie Layser’s was courageous and compelling. I hope she feels better today.
The DoJ alleges that Google built a “trifecta of monopolies” to place a vice-like grip on the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through the digital ad market.
This was the siege, inspired by the mighty reign of Gilgamesh I wrote about at the weekend.
The scale of Google’s siege has begun to be revealed:
Google Ad Manager has a 91 per cent market share.
It delivers 13 billion ads a day.
Nine in 10 publishers rely on it.
So do eight in 10 advertisers.
Two fifths of global video ads are traded there.
Google made $31 billion from it in 2021.
Roughly $12 billion went to publishers.
Four fifths of News Corp’s ad revenue relies on it, and
Google charged 36 per cent of revenue in fees.
The DoJ argues that this is an illegal monopoly, and is demanding the court breaks Google up. It’s already proven Google’s monopolies in search and Android’s app store.
Google denies the allegation and argues the ad market is full of rivals. It’s named Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
It’s worth noting two of them face their own antitrust battles in the months ahead.
And Microsoft will be perilously close to joining them if its leadership persists with provocative and unguarded nonsense like this on AI.
So now, people are no longer rushing to work for Google, but there’s still moolah to be made. The money train has just moved to the lawyering.
The Big Tech on Trial Substack noted: “The line of these attorneys stretched, literally, around the block, waiting for the court to open. Both Google and the government brought many attorneys in tow.
“Even more numerous were the lawyers representing the multifarious “interested party” - other businesses and powerful organizations who stand to be greatly affected by the precedent that will be set in this case.
“Standing in line, the banter that could be overheard in this who’s who of big law was extraordinary - debates over Gucci v Louboutin heels, which Ritz Carlton is better to stay at, and tactical discussions over what snacks to bring in one’s bag that were the least sticky.
“There was talk over how to organize one’s “war room” in the hotel across the street (meaning the stay behind team of associates supporting the lawyers in the trial) and other strategic considerations.
“To enter the courthouse, each person in line had to present their driver’s licence - revealing, somewhat predictably, that almost all were lawyers from New York, with a handful from DC, and some from California - a testament to how issues of such broad national and international reach are presided over by legal elites from a small enclave of cities.
“Google, by my count, had at least six attorneys (partners) sitting at counsel tables, with more attorneys, who looked to be associates, sitting in the back.
“This team is no doubt backed up by more attorneys operating out of their respective firm offices, and at their hotel.
“Partners at big law firms typically charge north of $2,000 per hour, with associates somewhere between there and $1,000 per hour, around the clock, for weeks on end of proceedings, following years of litigation to get to this point.
“Add it all up and trials like these cost Google hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees.”
At the epicentre is one lawyer in particular, and there is every chance she is going to become the story as this plays out.
Karen Dunn is leading Google’s defence, but on the opening day, she raised eyebrows by rushing from the court to brief Kamala Harris ahead of the Presidential debate with Donald Trump.
By yesterday, this was becoming an issue. The Washington Post’s Tech Brief newsletter landed in my inbox reporting:
“Republicans are dialling up pressure over Harris’s ties to Silicon Valley, with one top lawmaker calling into question whether a Google lawyer’s role preparing the Democratic nominee creates an ethical conflict.
“House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Tuesday called on the Justice Department to brief the committee on how it is “working to combat potential conflicts of interest and political bias” amid reporting that a lawyer representing Google against the Biden administration in court has also emerged as a prominent adviser for Harris’s presidential campaign.
“The dynamic has sparked concern among both Democrats and Republicans critical of the tech giants.
“This apparent conflict of interest raises serious concerns about whether Dunn’s relationship with key figures in the Biden-Harris Administration creates a conflict of interest that could inappropriately bias the Department’s approach,” Jordan wrote in a letter.”
As I wrote last week...
🎙️Let me know what you think of the coverage, and feel free to jump on the chatroom I have running to take questions. :)
All I can say is woah! Really great piece! Nicely done!