I have often heard that Google's dominance of the ad market is bad for ad space sellers, but this is the first time I've understood anything about the mechanisms.

I looked up "header bidding" [1][2] and basically it seems to be a way for sellers to auction their space to all potential buyers at once, rather than letting Google be the middle-man and rig the game in its favor... for example, by reserving the last bid in an auction for Google Ad Exchange.

No wonder Google is against it.

[1] https://www.lotame.com/back-basics-header-bidding/

[2] https://adage.com/article/digital/how-header-bidding-wars-le...

Title had to be trimmed to fit 80-character limit, from "Google's and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves".

This reports on an amended complaint filed Friday 14th January 2022.

"On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [0 PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages. The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail."

...

"The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer [REDACTED] was explicit that '[t]his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO [REDACTED]. When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO [REDACTED] and his other executives before making a decision."

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...

A reminder that this isn’t the first time Google has been caught colluding with competitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

It’s increasingly looking like there is a reckoning coming for the online advertising business.

As the owner of an e-commerce business dependent on online advertising I fear it will be small business that are most adversely affected by the coming changes.

That's some mustache-twirling evil stuff.

As a side note, this is a problem with ads as a business: since the morality of the very practice is dubious, the companies that sell them aren't expected to behave ethically.

Here is the most recent discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28976487

Isn't proof that these players are abusing their market power? Short trial?

Rather Molotov–Ribbentropesque.

I would be surprised if this was not the case for the last 10+ years.Every new player gets to a point where if they're relevant they will be offered a paycheck.Refusal of that paycheck means war, and usually the older and bigger player wins, sooner or later.The reasons being simple: a new player often provides new interesting features, but scales very hard due to lack of resources.The old player just has to effectively copy these new features into it's existing product(which takes less time than scaling infrastructure).

Again, this is not news.Besides actual leaks we've had tv shows/movies depicting this phenomenon for at least a decade, and usually mainstream pictures hit the screen when it's already obvious that something was partially true.

I don't care about the specifics here, but can someone school me: What possible mechanisms are there to prevent cartels? I hear a lot about how to deal with monopolies (which are trivial to identify) but very little about colluding oligopolies.

Wouldn't surpise me at all, if true. Both are running on ad money (and selling personal data) and have much to lose and much to win. Ad business being typically a dubious business of questionable real worth with huge smoke screens all over the place and a lot of make believe, it might make for a more opportunity, if secretly the market is strictly divided and stepping on eachother's toes is avoided.

There have already been large threads about this (I mean the latest revelation, not the earlier ones) but I don't have time to find them just now. Anyone?

Google/Facebook employees: do something good for civilisation and quit your jobs. There are plenty of employers out there where you can create something real and positive.

feels like my privacy is on the auction block

The advertising equivalent of Sykes-Picot, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact x)

When I bring the anti trust case against Google up with others (which this allegation stems from), no one seems to care about the actual content of the case. Their opinion is entirely dependent on their political "team": if you're a democrat, this is a republican witch hunt, if you're a republican, these companies are limiting free speech. They just repeat what their bubble tells them to.

There's a lot of pieces involved here, and I wish the political divisions in this country didn't stop people from actually researching the case and forming their own opinion. The outcome of this case will have massive effects and could bring about a lot of changes (both good and bad).