Google Offers Concessions To Fend Off US Antitrust Lawsuit

Alphabet's Google has offered concessions in an attempt to head off a possible U.S. antitrust lawsuit aimed at its massive ad-tech business, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, a sign that legal and regulatory pressures on the tech giant are coming to a head. From the report: As part of one offer, Google has proposed splitting parts of its business that auctions and places ads on websites and apps into a separate company under the Alphabet umbrella, some of the people said. That entity could potentially be valued at tens of billions of dollars, depending on what assets it contained. It couldn't be determined whether any offer short of asset sales would satisfy the U.S. Department of Justice, where antitrust officials have signaled a preference for deep structural changes to Google's ad-tech business, rather than promises to change business practices, the people said. The Justice Department has been conducting a long-running investigation into allegations that Google abuses its role as both a broker and auctioneer of digital advertisements to steer itself business at the expense of rivals. The department is preparing a lawsuit alleging Google's ad-tech practices are anticompetitive, an action that could be filed as soon as this summer, the people said.

What's your best solution approach?

[shanen]

Though I'm not going to look at the paywall, I do have a reaction to the topic, and even feel like it might be worth an FP thread, so...

This is only the possible FP stub you were not looking for. (With the usual apologies to Obi-Wan Kenobi.)

Re:

[shanen]

And I'll find out later if it landed in FP, eh? Not that I actually care about FP, though I care a lot about the topic...

First of all, if you don't agree that monopolies (and monopsonies) are bad, then we're probably done here, but let me take a swing at trying to convince you. Do you like freedom? If so, then you want more choices than the monopolist wants to give you.

The main counterargument involves efficiency, but I value my freedom so much that I think a certain amount of economic inefficiency is not a

Not sure how this would help

[ChatHuant]

I'm not sure how this move helps with the Alphabet monopoly. Say the ad business is split from Google and becomes Alphabet AdsRUs. How will this change the current situation? Will the components left under the Google name (search, maps, Android, whatever) stop tracking customers and passing the data to AdsRUs? Or will the remainder of Google start selling the tracking data to external ad slingers as well? On the other hand, will AdsRUs stop giving preference to ads for other Alphabet products, over ads from

Re:

[shanen]

Just so, and just what my solution approach is intended to address. It doesn't help to divide a big monopoly into separate monopolies, even if they are smaller. An effective solution approach needs to create competing companies at each other's throats.

In my earlier comment, I didn't talk about the ownership thing, but I'll use Microsoft as the obvious and convenient example. Imagine MS was cut into several competing companies. Each would get a copy of the source code and an equal share of the resources. The

Reminds me of that old song

[DarkRookie2]

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss"
But more literally in this case.