Judge rules Google search engine a monopoly; unreleased NVIDIA AI crawls the web

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Trust issues

The Google search engine officially has monopoly status.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled Monday that Google has maintained an illegal monopoly on internet search for years, Political reports.

IN A 286-page rulingMehta argues that Google is a monopoly in part because it maintains 90% of the search market through exclusive search provider agreements with mobile carriers and device makers, including Apple, Samsung and Verizon. Google paid billions of dollars a year to keep those agreements in place.

Google also used its dominant position in the search advertising market to fend off challenges from Microsoft, one of its main competitors, Mehta said. But he stopped short of saying Google had a monopoly on search advertising.

It’s still unclear what methods the government will use to fix Google’s search monopoly. That would require a separate legal proceeding. But Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter has expressed support for “structural remedies,” which could include breaking away parts of Google’s business.

Google plans to appeal the ruling.

But the decision will undoubtedly bolster related efforts to crack down on Big Tech monopolies, as it demonstrates that existing antitrust law applies in the internet age. The next step is another Google lawsuit, focused on its programmatic advertising technology, set to begin in September. The United States also has pending antitrust cases against Apple, Meta and Amazon.

Scratch, baby, scratch

Internal documents leaked 404 Media reveals that Nvidia is pulling video content from YouTube, Netflix, and other digital sources to train its AI.

Described by a senior Nvidia employee as a “video data factory that can provide training data that matches the visual experience of humans every day,” Project Cosmos was intended to be the foundational AI model for several products, including self-driving car systems.

It goes without saying that this reopens previous ethical and legal disputes over the downloading and use of copyrighted content in AI training datasets (YouTube calls this type of scraping “clear violation“terms of use), but it also begs the question: can we trust AI companies when they claim their products comply with copyright laws?

As we have previously reported in this newsletter, many advertising agencies still undecided to use AI tools without first confirming that their own data will not be used as a training source. More negative press like this will not inspire confidence in these tools in the future – not to mention many lawsuits lawsuits are currently being filed against AI companies, including Nvidia.

Same

Warner Bros. Discovery Max’s flagship service just launched a new homepage personalization feature for all U.S. accounts. WBD began rolling it out in December — and it’s eerily similar to Netflix’s content recommendations setup, Edge reports.

Based on browsing history and consumption patterns, Max now recommends titles in content rows that take up the entire homepage, not just a portion of it. Max also blocks titles it believes will not interest a subscriber.

Homepage personalization is one of the tactics that streamers use increase time spent in their apps, which could boost ad revenue. But another popular strategy for streaming services like Max is to copy Netflix, which has been steadily growing its ad-supported subscriber base and ad revenue.

Shortly after Netflix touted all the paid accounts it gained by banning password sharing, Max (and Disney+) announced plans to do the same. And in the future, WBD plans to add more features to Max that encourage user engagement, such as buttons viewers can use to rate shows they “like” or “love” — which Netflix did for at least two years.

But wait, that’s not all!

Ari Paparo tells the story of how Google built an advertising business that is now facing antitrust scrutiny. (LinkedIn)

New York’s job market is booming – but is that having a negative impact on other cities? (The Age of Advertising)

Olympic advertising is not as effective as it once was. (Drums)

Increasingly, the Olympics are relying on advertising rather than media rights to pay the bills.Digi Day)

What Marketers Need to Know About Buying Major Media. (WSJ)

Israeli petitioners withdraw class action lawsuit accusing Bright Data of harvesting children’s social media data. (Bloomberg)