Google Loses Bid To End US Antitrust Case Over Digital Advertising (reuters.com) 3
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's Google must face trial on U.S. antitrust enforcers' claim that the internet search juggernaut illegally dominates the online advertising technology market, a federal judge ruled on Friday. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, denied Google's motion during a hearing, according to court records. Google had argued for a win without a trial, saying that antitrust laws do not block companies from refusing to deal with rivals and that regulators had not accurately defined the ad tech market. Court papers did not specify what reasons the judge provided at the hearing. Motions like the one Google filed are only granted where a judge determines there is no factual dispute to send to trial. Last year, the U.S. Justice department and eight states sued Google, calling for the break up of the search giant's ad-technology business over alleged illegal monopolization of the digital advertising market.
Hope this leads somewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
US trust busting has wrought some wonderful stuff in the past, such as the internet revolution after AT&T was split up in 1984, so wishing it success here again.
As a former print journalists who now dabbles in websites (using Google Ads, so just a hobby since Google pays so little it doesn't even cover the server costs), I blame Google for many of the woes faced by newspapers. Here in South Africa, the largest final survivor just announced it is halting the presses on just about all its remaining newspapers.
Google scored in that newspaper management was pretty useless everywhere, and just sat back passively, even cheered, as all their lunch got stolen with their bread and butter like classifieds and later just about all other ad spend getting sucked up by Google.
The reason Google now has nearly a monopoly is thanks to its search-analytics giving it a stranglehold on traffic data which publishers can't argue with. I've tried switching to Microsoft rather than Google, but it doesn't seem to offer a similar service, at least not outside the US.
The few alternatives to Google seem very dodgy, mainly offering ads for online casinos and other legally dubious products, not that Google doesn't offer plenty of those as well.
Long story short, I hope US trust busters managed to save journalism, the web, lots of good things, by breaking up what's grown into an awful monster.