Who wins and loses from the remedies to Google’s ad tech monopoly
Google avoided a breakup. Here's who actually benefits from what it got instead.
It has been 17 months of speculation regarding the impact of the remedies aimed at curbing Google's dominance in the online advertising sector. Now that the remedies have been finalized, it is hoped that this issue will be resolved. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of the winners and losers from this decision.
Google emerges as the primary winner from these remedies. The company retains ownership of its ad exchange (AdX) and its ad server (DfP), and is under no obligation to sell either platform. Additionally, Google will not be required to open-source the auction logic of DfP. Furthermore, the judge upheld Google's interpretation of most of the contested provisions, including the timelines, monitoring reporting, response windows, and term length.
These decisions will primarily affect the way Google operates auctions within AdX and DfP, but this does not signify the end of the story.
Adform's CTO, Jochen Schlosser, aptly summarizes the situation: "Regulating auction access while leaving that buy-side integration intact doesn't open the market, it just turns Google into a supervised public utility and sets up a six-year game of algorithmic hide-and-seek." This statement highlights the concerns surrounding the remedies, as they do not truly promote market competition; instead, they merely impose regulatory oversight on Google and extend the ongoing algorithmic challenges it faces.
Written by urgent.news from Digiday's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
