> Google’s ad tech business brought in $30 billion last year, or about 8 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Alphabet. Its ad tech revenue has declined for 16 straight quarters, and analysts estimate it accounts for less than 1 percent of the company’s profit... “This is a business no one cares about"

Can someone closer to GOOG explain this? The phrase "ad tech" seems to have a very specific meaning here. Does this 1% include all advertising around the Web? Basically all ad revenue outside of Google's own properties? The number is surprisingly low.

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ianjc65 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Google owns Google Ad Manager (the tool third-party website and app publishers like NyTimes use to show ads on their properties), Google Ads (the place advertisers like Nike go to run ad campaigns across both Google properties and also these third party sites), and AdX the ad exchange that runs the auction that sits between Ad Manager and Google Ads.

The lawsuit is specifically about googles ownership of the auction and the ownership of the relationship on either side of the auction. The AdX auction also contains demand (ads from places besides google ads) and inventory (ad slots outside of ad manager). Website publishers allege that Google uses this ownership to artificially deflate the value of ads on third party websites.

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Drunk_Engineer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If it is a business no one cares about, then why has Google been fighting this?

	▲	xp84 34 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The money is nbd, but it's much more important to Google (same as it would be for any of the other tech giants) to keep a certain streak going - 42 years now and counting since the government forced a large or important company to do anything even resembling breaking up. A loss here would serve as precedent (either legally, or at minimum in people's emotions) that you CAN force a divestiture. If Google can be forced to divest this business, why not Chrome, YouTube, or Android? Why can't Apple be forced to divest the App Store business, or Amazon be forced to divest AWS?
	▲	hammock 25 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Great question. The adtech is what rigs the auctions for their moneymaker, the ads. If they no longer own the adtech then their ad revenue suffers greatly.

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43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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randysalami an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Classic capitalism move. It’s not directly making much profit therefore it’s not important! When something that gives you outsized influence or control.. sometimes you would lose money just to control.

Something can be unprofitable but still extremely valuable. These companies are playing strategy games at the geopolitical level and money is not the only resource they want to accumulate to win the game…

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cmrdporcupine 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I haven't been in ads there in, like, over a decade and some but I believe what was under threat here was specifically Google's ad exchange network. Basically third party bidding for space in Google's display ad network. Basically a part of the business which sells excess "inventory" and which is a much smaller part of their ad business than AdWords and AdSense. Or whatever they call these things now.

I used to work in AdX (and AdMeld that Google acquired) but not since 2014 or so. I believe the AdMeld acquisition itself was one of the things under the microscope here.