As Google gets ready to fight a second antitrust battle, this time over its advertising technology,

a new court filing hints at how the search giant might frame its arguments around ads and the state of the web.

Our McKenzie Segalo says more on that in today's tech check. Morning, Mac.

Hey, good morning, Carl. So in that filing, Google told a federal court that the open web is already in rapid decline. But analysts

called that antitrust strategy, not business reality, and rivals argue that the real battle

ahead is an ad war. Now, Google tells me that it was only talking about ads, not the open web

itself, but advertising is still the backbone of the open web's revenue engine.

Analysts say that Google's strengths remain in search and YouTube, while open web display ads keep shrinking as budget shift to retail media and connected TV.

And that's where Amazon and the trade desk are really gaining ground.

Gill Loria at DA Davidson says that Google has actually navigated the AI shift well

precisely because of its monopoly power.

He says the bigger threat will come once OpenAI or Perplexity flip on ads.

Now at this point, Perplexity says that ads make up less than 0.1% of its revenue,

and they remain purely experimental.

The company argues the bigger shift is toward a model that pays publishers for contributing

to answers rather than clicks.

Now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that he would rather test out affiliate-style

fees than traditional ads, floating a 2% cut

when users buy something that they discovered through the tool.

He stressed that rankings wouldn't be for sale, and while ads aren't ruled out, other

models come first.

Both companies say the real shift is users handing more tasks to AI assistance where the value and eventually the

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