Just tell us what role you've played for
the US government. Sure.
So, you know, I've been in search for 20 years.
I went to the closing arguments back in May.
The decision came out in August and I wrote a memo talking about how there
could be behavioral remedies that could

fix the search and the advertising
and search advertising markets. The DOJ, you saw the memos, asked me to
speak to them a few times about what we're doing.
And then you've seen in there I proposed a final judgment an order.
Some of the ideas are in there as well

as some of the ideas around Chrome
divestiture, Android divestiture. Some of that's around making sure that Google
would comply with the behavioral remedies.
And so this is a $200 billion market, and that's been a monopoly.
It's been around for a while.

So getting the remedy right is difficult
and then making sure that there's compliance will be the next step.
Your business is in the world of placing advertising, but not having to depend
just purely on a few key dominant forces in search.
Right.

Would some of the things being discussed
at the moment, some of the remedies dramatic as they are, help your benefit
and benefit your business? Sure.
You know, there's I think a lot of folks that would be able to invest in this in
this industry.

It's been, I think, something to do with
Microsoft calling it a no-fly zone for investment for about 20 years.
So we've been working where we can around the edges to help browsers and
large shopping apps create native search experiences.
And we think that is the future.

And obviously we have a little bit of a
head start, but there will be a lot of entrants in the space, both in the
advertising side and on the search results side, especially around
next-gen search agents.

That's really the future.
And that's that's kind of the irony of the whole situation is many feel
actually Google's never been under such competitive threat than they are now,
particularly when it comes to us perhaps abandoning Google search and instead
using ChatGPT.

Right.
You might also be using a overview and a Gemini offering just from your
perspective. Selling off Chrome.
Can you see anyone in the market actually buying that, apart from an open
eye, for example? Sure.
I think there's other folks who would be

interested in buying Chrome.
It's the largest browser in the world. I think what the DOJ's initial proposed
remedy really set off was the first shot of browser War 3.0.
So I think you'll see other browsers. You know, the doctor goes the Firefox of
the world, the Brave, those folks will

be much more to the forefront will
be new browsers coming out perhaps really built around gen AI and the idea
there is that you know if we have a lot of entry points and we're still able to
have some Google monetization, some

Google results side by side, that's
going to be the best, most innovative experience for users and searchers.
It's not that it's an all or nothing either.
You get Google and you've got to take Gemini or you can use something else.
It's a bit more innovative or trying

something different.
The idea that we all go to the search engine result page of Google and
basically get a one-size-fits-all solution, that's I think what the road,
you know, detriment is to consumers and to users of the search monopoly.
We have Chrome in place, but the problem

is it's very expensive for the
infrastructure built around an offering such as search and Google Chrome as an
access point to search. Would anyone ever be able to offer such
a great product for consumers without the huge deep pockets that Google has?
Exactly.

So half the clicks that Google sells now
to advertisers start on third-party sites like Apple, like Samsung.
The question is, can they get access to Google's results into their ads and
then curate their own experiences with perhaps instead of Gemini, a search
agent or with other ads or with other

results or rankings and changing how the
rankings work? That's really what we're talking about,
is allowing for that innovation to take hold, not forcing, you know, force
funneling every user to the search result page of Google in order to take
advantage of Google's assets.

So the idea is, I think it's both.
It's not an either/or situation. And that would be the remedy that I
think gets us into a more innovative space.
It also brings competition to the market, which is, at the end of the day,
what the goal is.

Google Vs. DOJ: Future of the Search Advertising Market

Welcome to the Bloomberg Technology YouTube channel. Subscribe for original series and mini-docs on game-changing technologies, profiles on innovators, live conversations with experts, and breaking technology news & analysis from Bloomberg TV.

Google Vs. DOJ: Future of the Search Advertising Market

Scripts