Data is the Oil of the Information Age Or Google's Antitrust Remedies Might Work
The Verge has a nice article about the proposed remedies the government has asked for now that Google has been proven to be violating anti-trust law in search. The headline remedy is selling Chrome, but that is not likely to be the most significant penalty. Sharing data is. But not just the data that the Verge focuses on.
Google search and ads run on data. Google uses all the information it gathers form you, all of your personal data, all of the information about what you click on and thus find useful, to improve the algorithms that generate your search results. The government wants Google to sell that data to other companies for a nominal fee that I am sure Google will try and make as non-nominal as is possible. In theory, letting other companies use that data would allow them to compete more evenly with Google in search (and thus ads), making the experience better for users and advertisers. There is a lot of value in that theory, and the Verge thinks it is the most important remedy. I think it is important, but I think another data sharing remedy would have an even greater effect.
The government also wants to force Google to treat advertisers better. They want to force Google to give advertisers transparent information about where their ads are placed, what they cost, and how effective they are. They also want to allow advertisers to export their ad data. Together, these remedies would make the ad market more competitive. Advertisers would be able to see how their ads do on Google, take their data to another company, and compare. It should lead to better products for advertisers and more competition in that market. And that would probably be the most important result of this trial.
Search and Chrome are only important in that they serve as vectors for Google to privilege their advertising business. No one makes money on browsers (and given how the idea of a free browser has been the standard for most of the history of the internet, I am not sure how anyone ever will) and search itself does not make money. Advertising is where the money is, and it’s how Google and Facebook have been able to become so powerful. By controlling the advertising market, including the data about how users interact with ads, they were able to separate the users from the advertisers and capture most of the ad value. This, in turn, lead to less money for independent websites and products and thus fewer independent websites and products. The free and open web depends on income sources not controlled by Google.
Breaking that monopoly, interjecting ways for companies to own the relationship between their products, their ads, and their users is the only way to ensure that Google’s power over several markets is weakened. A competitive ad market is the key to restoring a free and open internet. Only once companies are in a position to benefit from their own users and advertising can we hope to have an internet that supports things like independent journalism.
Many of the proposed remedies are important, but the key is to ensure that the remedies allow other organizations to complete in and/or benefit from the advertising market. Search is not fixed if it continues ot allow google to dominate the online advertising market. I hope the judge realizes the importance of ensuring that the remedies work together to ensure a fairer ad market.