Google 323 BC

Written by Brook Schaaf

On his deathbed, Alexander the Great was asked to whom his “spear-won realm” should pass. His whispered response: “To the strongest.” As no single successor candidate was quite strong enough, his empire fragmented among his warring generals, known as the Diadochi.

We may be witnessing something similar with a possible breakup of Google’s virtual empire, in the wake of Google’s second and third guilty verdicts over two antitrust trials (the first for AdWords; the second and third for “open web display publisher ad server and the open-web display ad exchange market”). These rulings echo legal cases elsewhere around the globe. In September, an EU court found “Google broke EU antitrust rules… by unfairly promoting its own comparison shopping service.”

Last month, a similar preliminary ruling found the company in violation of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. In November, Canada’s Competition Bureau took legal action to force divestiture of Google’s advertising technology.

The worldwide court battles to follow will determine the governorship of Google’s many digital provinces: Search/AI, GA4, YouTube, Ads, Google Ad Manager (GAM), Cloud, Android, Chrome, Google Play, Gmail, Maps/Earth, Drive/Docs/Sheets, and so forth.

On Monday, the remedy trial for the search monopoly began in the very same court as another large company’s antitrust trial: “[Judge] Mehta in the morning and Meta in the afternoon,” as one reporter quipped.

The DOJ wants Google to divest Chrome, the entry point for 35% of search queries; end exclusive distribution agreements and revshare; not to enter future similar agreements for new tech like AI; and to license search data to rivals. And maybe to sell Android. There will presumably be additional proposed remedies related to the ad exchange products. Here, it’s important to note that information access and revshare controls may mean that divestiture and behavioral remedies are not so very different as solutions.

How hard will Google fight to keep its cash-won realm? The most interesting take I heard was from Ari Paparo of Marketecture: “Google wants to get rid of these businesses, but they don’t want to play their card too early because they’ll lose all their negotiating leverage.”

Perhaps Google’s Diadochi already sense the end of the empire is nigh? If so, it’s better for them to determine the dividing lines. To continue Paparo’s metaphor of a gambling game, it feels a little bit like three-card monte, whereby Google is keeping authorities guessing as to what they want to keep – the unit that makes the most money today, tomorrow? The most users? The most political power? The unit that will best help humanity? Just kidding on this last one – lmfao.

Google already appears incorrigible, having paid to preload the Gemini AI chatbot on new Samsung phones – exactly the kind of paid distribution arrangement it got in trouble for. 

One opinion piece I read contended that “Marketers stand to gain the most from the structural reforms now in motion.” If this is true, it seems to me that affiliate marketers will be among the winners because there will be more opportunities to win traffic, add value for users, and monetize through commissions.

For the sake of the open internet, let us hope that the judiciary is strong enough to support a diverse, competitive ecosystem that allows any number of players to participate in the rewards of the internet, and that it can look toward the future as well as at the past.