Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

Posted by donohoe 15 hours ago

Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business(www.nytimes.com)

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-defeats-us-b...

323 points | 236 commentspage 2

shoopadoop 4 hours ago|

The $22M ballroom donation was a pretty sweet deal.

https://patriot.university/knowledge-base/organizations/org-... "$22 million ballroom contribution — the largest single documented amount from any corporate donor — arising from a lawsuit settlement over YouTube’s content moderation decision to suspend Trump post-January 6. Settlement filed September 29, 2025, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Trump v. YouTube, LLC et al.)."

bdlowery 3 hours ago||

Good.

2OEH8eoCRo0 7 hours ago||

> Google used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in search and search advertising.

paaloeye 7 hours ago||

Arguably tangential, but for how long more will Nvidia and CUDA avoid the US anti-trust?

cyberax 6 hours ago|

Why would they be subjected to anti-trust? There's a robust competition from AMD and Intel, and NVidia is not using any obviously illegal competition tricks.

benchloftbrunch 2 hours ago||

Idk how you're defining "robust competition", but NVIDIA and CUDA definitely rule the GPU computing space right now, at least judging from a biased sample of what I read online. Those who experienced computing in the 1990s and 2000s know of the harmful effects that result when proprietary tech stacks become de facto monopolies. Think Adobe Flash, think Microsoft's "embrace/extend/extinguish" strategy. Perhaps antitrust law needs rework if it can't deal with this kind of monopoly.

cyberax 1 hour ago||

That's because CUDA had been better than alternatives for quite a while. But ROCm and MLX exist, and they are rapidly advancing. Google has its own chips, as does AWS.

There are also no signs of NVidia colluding against other manufacturers. For example, AMD's MI350[P] are all sold out for the next year or so.

I just don't see NVidia becoming the next MS circa year two thousand.

sensanaty 8 hours ago||

> Google’s ad tech business brought in $30 billion last year, or about 8 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Alphabet. Its ad tech revenue has declined for 16 straight quarters, and analysts estimate it accounts for less than 1 percent of the company’s profit... “This is a business no one cares about"

Uhhh, what? What kind of colorful accounting is this that they're pulling off?

cmrdporcupine 8 hours ago|

This isn't for the whole of Google's ad business. Just its ad exchange and I think parts of DFP; basically just mechanisms for auctioning off excess display ad inventory.

xp84 8 hours ago|||

Thanks. I was trying to figure out exactly what's in scope here. I'd love to get a broad breakdown or a big pie chart that goes to this level of granularity so I can see where this sits within its other 'non-Google-property' ad businesses.

cmrdporcupine 7 hours ago||

Ads market is terrifyingly complicated. Or was when I worked in it fifteen years ago. I stopped following it out of disgust

strongpigeon 4 hours ago|||

You’re partly right. It’s indeed mostly about AdX but also because Google owns all three sides of the equation (publisher-side via AdSense (and to a lesser extent DFP), AdX, and buy-side via Google Ads)

GreenVulpine 9 hours ago||

https://archive.is/rlAbY

Non-paywalled link

JMiao 8 hours ago||

twenty billion walkin out the court buildin woo woo!

shevy-java 7 hours ago||

The US judges lack courage here. This means they help Google power through with its de-facto monopoly.

This is, interestingly, also against capitalism, since now you no longer have a truly free market; no real competition. It is just one giant blob contorlling (almost) everything. Every blind one sees how Google controls WAY too much. Youtube is part of Google too. It is a cash cow that excludes competitors.

pessimizer 6 hours ago|

This isn't a matter of courage. They're doing what they want to do. Clinton's deregulation, especially of telecommunications, is what lead to our horrible present (he appointed this judge.) The judges that Obama appointed literally don't believe that antitrust should exist.

andrekandre 5 hours ago||

yea, a lot of people claiming "but its a clinton judge" dont really get this i think...

CrzyLngPwd 9 hours ago||

So, essentially, a nothing burger.

As usual.

taikhoom 2 hours ago|

[dead]

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