What the Google antitrust ruling could mean for advertisers

Google’s loss in its federal antitrust case may mean huge changes for the company, web users and digital advertisers. It could lead to a giant hit to parent company Alphabet’s bottom line; more and higher search selections for people; and lower-priced, simpler promoting.

We won’t know until U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta hands down the penalties in a couple of months. However, Google has said it is going to appeal the ruling, so it is going to likely be years before anyone knows for certain how every little thing will fall out.

Dig deeper: Why Google lost: The DoJ’s case in 11 slides

That said, the ruling comes at a great moment for competitors. Thanks to changes in consumers’ online behavior, persons are getting used to using things apart from Google.

“People now not depend on only one source,” Marcel Hollerbach, chief innovation officer at product-to-consumer company Productsup, told MarTech “Depending on what you wish, you would possibly head straight to Amazon for a last-minute phone charger for an upcoming trip, browse TikTok for recipe ideas for an upcoming ceremonial dinner, visit Reddit for engineering advice, or turn to ChatGPT for help with asking for a raise.”

AI-powered search

Combine that with the recent sorts of AI-powered search, and it’s easy to see how there could be an actual challenge to Google’s dominance for the first time.

“This has happened at an ideal time for their competitors since you’ve got OpenAI, you’ve got Microsoft and the fundamentally different conversational search underpinned by AI, which I believe completely transforms the consumer experience,” Amelia Waddington, chief product officer for search intelligence vendor Captify, told MarTech.

Google’s own efforts with generative search have shown it isn’t yet ready for prime time. However, with corporations like OpenAI and Microsoft also developing versions, likely someone will soon get it right.

“As AI-powered search technologies (like Search GPT) emerge, this ruling could result in recent solutions that pair speed, ease of use, and privacy protections that ultimately put Google on its heels,” Lance Wolder, head of strategy and marketing for digital media agency PadSquad, told MarTech. “This ruling … presents a chance for privacy-first engines (like DuckDuckGo and Brave) to go on the offensive to realize traction, potentially becoming the default options on devices or platforms.”

Solution must be greater than more selections

Any treatment that seeks to create a level playing field for text search would must do greater than end Google’s ability to be the default search engine for Apple, Android and Firefox. The incontrovertible fact that we use the verb “to Google” demonstrates the company’s dominant position with the public.

Google’s browser Chrome is similarly dominant, something it’s difficult to see changing any time soon.

“Is there a current browser whose functionality right away could suddenly take over here?” said Wallingham. “There needs to be a compelling reason why, and I don’t I don’t see that in other browsers. And the prices that Google can charge for their search-based promoting, that’s entirely based on the percentage of market share they’ve. Right?”

Even with more selections offered, user inertia alone would go away Google and Chrome with enormous market share. So the company could still charge what it wanted for search ads. One possible solution for that may be to have the company unload Chrome and maybe prevent Google from being a default search alternative for a while.

Breaking up could also be good to do

“One of Google’s biggest benefits in the AI market is its ability to integrate the technology across its various services seamlessly,” said Hollerbach. “The same goes for Microsoft or Amazon. If we were to see any parts of those businesses split, it could pave the way for other ‘better of breed’ AI players to stand up.”

Whatever the final decision in the case seems to be, it is going to likely cause problems for other corporations and digital advertisers.

“In addition to diversifying search engine marketing and SEM strategies, organizations may experience much more disruption in digital promoting performance as the flow of knowledge about user interests and behaviors becomes more fragmented and scrutinized,” said Andrew Frank, distinguished VP Analyst in Gartner’s Marketing Practice.

While nobody is frightened about Apple’s survival, the deal that made Google the default search alternative on its devices and browser brought in $18 billion last yr. Samsung may even take a financial hit for similar reasons.

The organization that may take the biggest hit from ending its default search take care of Google is the non-profit Mozilla. The maker of the Firefox browser got $510 million from Google out of $593 million total revenue in 2021-2022, based on its latest financial report.