Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

Kinda surprised. Google's core business is advertising. Some vertically integrated aux services (like chrome) feel ripe for antitrust, but I wasn't expecting ads themselves. What is Google without ads?

("Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist")

Everything else. Cloud provider, operating systems, browsers, hosting business apps, phone licenser, Internet provider, smart home manufacturer, and various moonshots. Their ad company is a monopoly because of those other services.

Google as an ad company that can't leverage those other lines of business to gain an advantage over other ad companies still has a viable ad business. They can compete on the basis of that lone company's strengths.

("If you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it")

Thanks, I like the last quote. But I'm curious... Would it be preferable to have Google owning all of these services you listed—just not the ad company they depend on, or the inverse—all the companies are spun out?

I see your point, but also, if Google continued to own all these other things, it would still be a terrifyingly large spread, no?

Large companies, even monopolies, aren't the problem. Unfair leverage to suppress competition is. Those products without the subsidizing revenue of ads, and ads without the information flows of those products, is the goal.

Who gets what part of the company is the wrong question to ask. The org chart would get split along those business units. In all likelihood, the company called "Google" would be the software side, since that's where search lives.

They are a problem in terms of an efficient free market; they make the information flow asymmetrically biased in their favor, and cause higher prices and implicit collusion. That is true even without any intent to harm.