Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
It's time to start lobbying hard for an antitrust breakup of Google. This DRM plan, as abuse of a monopoly position, provides more political coverage for a forced breakup.It's pretty clear how to break up Alphabet, because it grew mostly by acquisition.- Google - search, ads on search pages and nothing more.- DoubleClick - third party ads on other sites.- Analytics - services to web sites.- Cloud - the money-losing data center service. Probably gets sold to AWS or Hurricane Electric.- Android - phones and similar devices- Chrome - browsers- YouTube - streaming content. Probably gets sold to Netflix or AT&T or Comcast.- Waymo - self-driving cars. Probably gets sold to a car company.- Alphabet - all the other stuff.Now, some of these have conflicting interests. That's a good thing. With Chrome separated from Google and Doubleclick, and forced to fight for market share, it's not in Chrome's interest to prevent blocking ads from DoubleClick or Google. Google wants people to see ads on search pages, while Doubleclick wants people to leave the search site and see ads elsewhere. Now there's competition.Antitrust action against Google is already underway. The State of Texas and several state attorneys general have a case pending.[1]  There are other cases.[2] All these cases benefit from Google's move to entrench their monopoly by technical means.So make lots of noise politically about that. It's quite likely to make Google dump this proposal, on the advice of their antitrust lawyers.[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-05/google-an...[2] https://www.lanierlawfirm.com/google-antitrust-lawsuits-expl...