What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Will Google Get Broken Up?

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

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News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that it is suing Google over its ad technology. What do they contend Google has been doing? And does this mean Alphabet is headed for a Bell Telecom-style bust-up?

Guest: Leah Nylen, reporter covering antitrust for Bloomberg News

Host: Lizzie O’Leary

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now.
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0:41.1	Today, the Department of Justice joined by eight states filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against Google.
1:00.1	When the news broke on Tuesday that the government was suing Google over its ad technology, I immediately thought of Leon Nylon.
1:10.1	She's a Bloomberg news reporter who covers antitrust. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say she lives and breathes this stuff.
1:18.1	Her Twitter name is Leah antitrust but verify Nylon. So on Wednesday, I called her up.
1:25.1	What's the sports analogy for this case? Like is this your Super Bowl, your World Series? What is it?
1:33.1	Yeah, I mean, this isn't like the Olympics. Really? Yeah. This is like the biggest case in like decades, you know.
1:46.1	So it's like a really big thing that only comes around every once in a while.
1:51.1	How long have you been waiting for the Department of Justice to file this case? Because I assume you knew this was coming.
1:58.1	So yes, so they started this investigation in 2019 and everyone thought that they might file this in 2020, but they ended up prioritizing the other one by the other one.
2:09.1	She means a case that the DOJ filed against Google in 2020 over its dominance in the search market.
2:15.1	And every now and then we hear like it's almost done. It's almost ready. We're going to file and then like something would happen.
2:21.1	And they'd be like, sorry, just kidding.
2:24.1	But yeah, so like, I don't know. I've been like anxiously awaiting this case every now and then writing a story being like, it's coming soon.
2:33.1	It still exists. So I wasn't quite sure if this was really going to be it, but it was it.
2:41.1	What the DOJ is saying is that Google unfairly dominates almost every aspect of online advertising.
2:48.1	Every time you see an ad online, they say Google is muscling its competitors out.
	...

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