Google's advertising monopoly is threatening the future of the open web

[Alfonso Maruccia]

A hot potato: The US Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google is finally underway. The DoJ has accused the Mountain View company of monopolistic behavior within the online advertising market. Privacy advocates warn that things may get worse depending on how the case goes.

If the DoJ's lawsuit fails, the online ecosystem could worsen for users and third-party companies. Lawyers, nonprofit organizations, and privacy experts recently held a press hearing about the landmark case, stating that a Google win would jeopardize the future of the open web.

The open web refers to an internet information infrastructure that's free, decentralized, and accessible to everyone. Ideally, the open web would have no central authorities, or "gatekeepers," to control access and manage the information people access through traditional web interfaces such as web browsers.

Google is a dominant gatekeeper for most netizens worldwide. Lee Hepner, a California-based antitrust lawyer and legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Project, claims that the open web will continue to decline if Google wins the case. He contends that an open web means opportunity for small online businesses. If we lose this ecosystem, the online market will become "increasingly vertical" and entrapped within Big Tech's walled gardens.

Tech Oversight Project Executive Director Sacha Haworth said Google is trying to de-emphasize the harm its predatory business model brings to the web. Google-controlled advertising is "warping" the digital economy, significantly contributing to inflation.

If Google didn't exert a monopolistic influence on advertising, broader market competition would lead to lower consumer prices for online goods and services. Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Elise Phillips notes that the digital advertising landscape should be more accessible and could give small and medium businesses a better opportunity to reach online shoppers. Market researcher Karina Montoya adds that a Google win would lead to a virtually insurmountable divide between the "haves and the have-nots" in the online market.

The DoJ's lawsuit argues that Google created a market monopoly by unlawfully acquiring smaller rivals in the advertising business. It also accuses the search giant of controlling vital parts of the advertising supply chain, actively raising prices to make advertisers pay more and website owners get much less.

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Google's advertising monopoly is threatening the future of the open web

 

[yRaz]

Let's not forget how Googles push of Manivest v3 through Chrome will make adblockers obsolete. The mobile web is already starting to look like it did in the early 2000s. Unblockable ads might break my internet addiction.

 

[Uncle Al]

Google has obviously abused it's position on the internet. Hopefully with a win the DOJ will successfully break them into tiny pieces with extensive regulation and supervision to prevent this from happening again.

 

[AlexIL]

Google tried what social media did
Now they face the full fiery of the lawmakers.

If you in business making money don't get into politics. If you getting there, you're finished no matter how large you are. Senate does not forgive business getting it's nose into non business matters. Good for everyone. Google is finished.

 

[Axeia]

Let's not forget how Googles push of Manivest v3 through Chrome will make adblockers obsolete. The mobile web is already starting to look like it did in the early 2000s. Unblockable ads might break my internet addiction.

Luckily Firefox is still around with fully functional adblockers.
Google is raising prices left and right, adding more advertisements to YouTube, taking steps to block adblockers and as the cherry on top making Chrome less capable at blocking ads.

A lot of these can't be helped but switching browsers is easy and Firefox can do with more users so that webdevs actually bother testing their sites in it.

 

[yRaz]

Luckily Firefox is still around with fully functional adblockers.
Google is raising prices left and right, adding more advertisements to YouTube, taking steps to block adblockers and as the cherry on top making Chrome less capable at blocking ads.

A lot of these can't be helped but switching browsers is easy and Firefox can do with more users so that webdevs actually bother testing their sites in it.

I already switched to Firefox a few years ago. Still, when I use Android, it automatically opens things in Chrome even if I have Firefox as my default browser.

 

[Burty117]

I already switched to Firefox a few years ago. Still, when I use Android, it automatically opens things in Chrome even if I have Firefox as my default browser.

It’s the same with Windows as well, you set Firefox as the default browser, yet links in Teams still forcibly open in Edge.

I don’t get how Microsoft have gotten away with it, the EU gave them a massive fine and forced them to stop forcing IE on everyone years ago, this is the exact same behaviour yet it’s apparently okay now?

 

[OortCloud]

Let's not forget how Googles push of Manivest v3 through Chrome will make adblockers obsolete. The mobile web is already starting to look like it did in the early 2000s. Unblockable ads might break my internet addiction.

I agree. Browsing the web on a mobile is already a pretty awful experience. The ads and popups and cookie prompts etc are just everywhere. Chrome on a phone is basically unusable.

 

[Vanderlinde]

Let's not forget how Googles push of Manivest v3 through Chrome will make adblockers obsolete. The mobile web is already starting to look like it did in the early 2000s. Unblockable ads might break my internet addiction.

You can still turn off Manifest V3 in your chrome browser. Firefox will support V2.

And, you can still use V3, but with a simple DNS based adblocker. There's a zillion of those out there. Adguard, the use of a VPN with adfilter (ProtonVPN) or run one yourself at home with a Pi-hole.

 

[Dimitrios]

Someone made a comment about DOJ helping out, almost spit my coffee out.

 

[FF222]

Let's not forget how Googles push of Manivest v3 through Chrome will make adblockers obsolete. The mobile web is already starting to look like it did in the early 2000s. Unblockable ads might break my internet addiction.

You've it all backwards. Anti ad-blocking measures are a response to more and more people blocking ads, and hence making it impossible for web sites and services to cover their operational costs. That's obviously not Google, but the millions of small website who can't cross-finance other services and can't make money at scale any other way than with ads.

Ideally users would not block ads at all, but chose and pick between sites depending on the quality of content, and also on how obtrusive or fitting their ads are - just like they pick and chose between products depending or their price/value proposition. This would lead to sites with less ad proliferating and sites with more ads losing their visitors.

But people are generally dumb, and can only think in extremes. The use ad blockers completely ruins the model laid out above, as it punishes all sites equally and indiscriminately, and deprives them any way to make money and cover their costs. Ad blocking leads to, if anything, to there being even more ads pushed by sites, because they now have to recover their costs from the less and less users who are still not blocking ads, for whatever reason, which then will lead to even more of them blocking ads, and even more ads being show to the remaining few......

In that sense ad blocking is not a solution to anything, but something that actually escalates the problem of ads, and that makes it impossible to reach an equilibrium, that's beneficial for both parties (ie. both to websites, which have to make money somehow, and also to users, who want to see as few ads as possible, but also not have to pay for anything). Because of that ad blocking has to go away some way or the other in order for the free web to survive.

Most people will obviously not even recognize that (and even if they do, they will not acknowledge that, because having been brainwashed so long), but the point is, they will not behave responsibly, which leaves methods like anti-adblocking the only way for the free and open web to survive. If that doesn't work, for whatever, then the free and open web will cease to exist, and the only freely and openly available sites will be that are either commerce sites (meaning the whole site is a giant ad farm), or personal sites, like in the old times on Geocities, that provide virtually no value to anybody. Simple as that. You can't build a business and a professional site/service on zero revenue.

Also there are alternatives to ads in works, like micropayments for websites, but again, those are virtually non-existent at this point, and most people will not freely subscribe to any of those, because of just pure greed and selfishness, and those solutions are also only feasible if controlled by giants, like Google, and integrated into the browsers themselves.

 

[Win7user]

I think China-Google down, period! China-Google is NOT your friend.