Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

Google isn't a monopoly in the Standard Oil sense of the term. Its ad revenue is big because it occupies so much user attention. I actually think many suggested remedies would actually make Google more profitable.

For example, prohibiting Apple-Style search deals would mean that Google gets a smaller amount of traffic, but that traffic would come with zero cost. That could end up being more profitable. A similar argument applies to Chrome or any other customer acquisition vehicle.

The real barriers to making Google competitive are fixable but require a different sort of regulation outside of antitrust.

I mean it wouldn't make sense for it to be more profitable for google if there were no search deals, since otherwise they would just cancel the deal themselves. Clearly they see long term value in blocking out competition even at that high of a price

Google can't cancel it right now because then otherwise Bing would bid for it. Antitrust rules which prevented anyone from bidding it would protect against this.

A historical parallel is when tobacco advertising was banned, and cigarette companies because more profitable. Advertising greatly affected which cigarettes people smoked but had a smaller (though still real) impact on whether they smoked. So the companies kept most of the revenue with none of the advertising cost.

> Antitrust rules which prevented anyone from bidding it would protect against this.

why would anti-trust rules prevent _anyone_ from bidding? Apple can sell their browser search, just like mozilla can sell firefox search. And anyone with a browser could do the same. Unless the anti-trust rules somehow become so overarching that the selling of space for advertising becomes illegal?

I think it would be a good move to prevent browser deals. There is no reality in which the winner is Firefox, Kagi or DDG - it will always be Google or Bing. That's clearly anticompetitive - it locks the other browsers out of a major share of the market.

If you're arguing we should split Chrome development from Google then I'm 100% with you there.