Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
This week, the Justice Department sued Google, again, for monopolizing digital advertising technologies through serial acquisitions and anticompetitive auction manipulation, in order to “subvert competition in and monopolize advertising revenue” from basically everyone on the internet.
It appears they have been successful- Google brought in $209 billion USD in ad revenue for 2021, making them the largest ad company in the world by far. Their closest competitor, propaganda purveyor Facebook, “only” made $115 billion that same year.
This is especially significant in terms of income for advertising company google, as in 2021, 81% of their total revenue came from… you guessed it… advertising. Google of course immediately disputed the claims made by the lawsuit, stating, “DOJ’s lawsuit ignores the enormous competition present within the industry and attempts to unwind acquisitions nearly 15 years old which could potentially harm publishers and advertisers while also stifling innovation.”
The DOJ has not responded to these statements by Google, probably because at this point they will let this go to the courts without further comment, but also possibly because everything Google just said in that quote was.. What’s the word.. wrong and dumb. Wait.. that’s three words. Stupid. Yes, that’s better.