Category Archives: Google

Affordable 5G phones are fast becoming a crowded market.

At $499 the realme 7 5G is a full $100 cheaper than Google's Pixel 4A with 5G and comes with two extra cameras to boot; but not all cameras are created equally.

The realme 7 5G ticks a lot of boxes which many of the industry's most expensive phones have slowly stripped away.

You can expand the phone's 128GB storage with a micro SD card, a USB-C wall adapter comes in the box (here's looking at you, Apple and Samsung) and there's space for a second sim card to "separate work from play" for those sick of carrying around separate work and personal phones.

By design, the realme 7 5G is nearly identical to Google's Pixel 4A with 5G.

Realme has combined a responsive fingerprint reader and on/off button on the right hand side of the phone (which I now personally prefer) and keeps its camera "bump" to a minimum.

The phone still rocks slightly while lying flat on the table, but it's nowhere near as cumbersome as the bump on the back of the new iPhone and Samsung models.

The 6.5" screen mimics the hole-punch selfie cam placement on the Google Pixel too, which rarely to never obstructs your view while watching videos.

The screen doesn't get quite as bright as the standard iPhone 12 to my eye, but I never had any problem reading the screen in full sunlight with the brightness cranked up.

It may not be as crisp as the competition's best AMOLED displays but realme's LCD holds its own for $499.

The realme's 120Hz at that price tag is wildly impressive and makes for an incredibly smooth experience.

Gamers will love those numbers too, and should have few problems with the Dimensity 800U chip powering the device.

Overall the device feels snappy and quickly reminded me why I love Android after a few months using the new iPhones.

Problem is, the latest update, Android 11 isn't available onrealme 7 5G with no word on when it could arrive.

That means it's missing features like an in-built screen recorder and my favourite Google-exclusive app, Recorder - which automatically transcribes audio without needing an internet connection.

Out of the box, the realme 7 5G's battery doesn't disappoint.

Its 5000 mAh's easily got me through full work days taking calls, hotspotting to my laptop while downloading and uploading videos.

Using the "dart" charger that comes in the box should get a flat realme 7 5G to around 60 per cent in 30 minutes according to realme, which was accurate in my testing.

Finally, the cameras. There are five on the realme 7 5G: a 48MP standard lens, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, a macro lens for extreme close-ups, 2MP black-and-white portrait lens and 16MP selfie camera.

We're fast learning that not all pixels are created equal. Apple and Google work wonders with 12MP cameras thanks purely to the power of their camera software and, with the exception of Samsung, the focus of the big name companies has been on improving AI and stability, rather than megapixels for years now.

Realme has stuffed a lot of lenses into the 7 5G, but in practice, its camera doesn't focus as quickly, pick up as much detail or accurately capture colours as well as you may expect in 2021.

Compare these three images inside Victoria's parliament taken with an iPhone 12 Mini and the realme 7 5G.

At full digital zoom, you can clearly easily make out the numbers on the clock on the iPhone 12 shot, but not on the one shot on the realme 7 5G.

The field of view is greater on the iPhone 12's ultra-wide but I would argue that the realme's bolder contrast (and possibly macro camera) make the close up of the balustrade more striking, despite the extreme background blur.

Now compare these two portrait shots. Against a bright background, the realme 7 5G doesn't take a natural looking shot.

The puppy's fur appears to be a much darker, rusty red rather and loses plenty of detail in that darkness.

All phones struggle in low light, but I was hopeful night-time video would hold up on the realme 7 5G thanks to its new astrophotography setting.

Alas, it's almost impossible to see what's happening on this video of a darkened Melbourne airport which was captured in much more detail and with much fewer artifacts on the same iPhone 12 Mini.

Again, the iPhone 12 Mini is more than double the price of the realme 7 5G and as such, one-to-one comparisons aren't exactly fair.

Ultimately, realme has delivered an impressive phone for the price.

The 5G speeds were expectedly quick and the connection was strong across much of Melbourne's CBD.

The 5G didn't drain the battery as heavily as I expected and for anyone looking for a cheaper way to buy into the next generation network, the realme 7 5G is a compelling option for the price.

Realme 7 5G is available from February 11, 2021 in Australia.

Realme supplied an early model of the phone to 9News for the purpose of this review.

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What the latest 5G android phone realme 7 has to offer - 9News

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks on stage during Facebook session at the Cannes Lions 2019 : Day Three on June 19, 2019 in Cannes, France.

Richard Bord | Getty Images

Google and Facebook pledged to help one another if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The story is based on an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 U.S. states against Google last week that was seen by the Journal.

Google and Facebook reportedly made a deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google's online advertising tools. In return, the social media giant was given "special treatment" when it used them itself, according to the Journal.

The lawsuit reportedly states that Google and Facebook knew their deal could result in antitrust investigations.

A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the claims made in the lawsuit were inaccurate. "The idea that this was a secret deal is just wrong. We've been public about this partnership for years," they said.

Facebook did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Read The Journal's full story here.

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Google and Facebook reportedly agreed to help each other against potential antitrust action - CNBC

Nickelback has created a parody version of its own song Photograph for a new Google Photos ad, and its a lot more entertaining than you might suspect. In the ad, Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger mercilessly makes fun of himself, fully leaning into the Photograph meme and its usefulness in explaining all sorts of graphs and in illustrating framed copies of other memes, as Kroeger instructs viewers to look at them in his unmistakable, raspy voice.

The ads lyrics and photos touch on Kroegers noodle hair and his passion for photographing dessert. That it manages to both be a nice example of Google Photos features and a cute use of the old meme makes it worth a watch.

Photograph is 15 years old, and the meme connected to it has been around for almost as long, so seeing the ad is bound to spark some memories, which is exactly Googles intention. While its not quite an original idea for an ad, Google gets a pat on the head for being aware of the joke. Nickelback also wrote the new lyrics for the parody version, according to an email Google sent to The Verge, so the bands having some fun too.

Viral videos cemented Nickelbacks status as a meme, but here at The Verge, Nickel-rolling is what first comes to mind when we think of the band. Nickel-rolling is the unfortunate practice of trolling people with songs, lyrics, and images from the band Nickelback, like a Rickroll for the Nickelback generation.

The band has been the butt of jokes in the past, but if Im honest, Photograph is a catchy song good luck getting it out of your head if you watch the whole Google Photos ad. I think a lot of the ironic hate towards Nickelback is fading I know it is for me. When we discussed the new ad, Verge editor Nick Statt summed up the phenomenon well:

I feel like every thing the internet hates eventually becomes endearing, because the curve of internet culture bends toward not being a jerk as everyone just grows up.

Whether someone at Google is admitting to being a Nickelback fan or simply reviving an old joke, some levity might be necessary given Googles new storage policy in Photos. The company announced it will end its unlimited storage offer for high quality photos after June 1st, 2021. If you want to store more than 15GB after that cut-off, youll have to subscribe to Google One. Yes, Google would like you to look at your photographs, and it fully expects you to pay for the privilege of storing them.

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Google and Nickelback really want you to look at your photographs - The Verge

Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG) Google has been under fire. In spite of its work organizing the world's data and being a "helpful" tech company, it was a tough year for online advertising because of the pandemic. An antitrust lawsuit was also filed, claiming Google has taken part in anticompetitive activity to maintain its lead in internet search.

The trial isn't expected to occur until the autumn of 2023, though, which means it's more or less business as usual for Google in 2021. Here are the three catalysts that will dictate whether the stock can continue its relentless rise in the next 12 months.

Advertising often takes a hit during recessions, and 2020 was no exception. In the midst of the lockdown to halt the spread of COVID-19, many businesses hit the brakes on marketing campaigns. Google's digital ad empire wasn't immune. Ad sales have slowed in the last year and even declined year over year during the spring -- though they quickly snapped back to growth mode over the summer.

Period

Google Ad Revenue

Year-Over-Year Increase (Decrease)

2019

$135 billion

16%

Q1 2020

$33.8 billion

10%

Q2 2020

$29.9 billion

(8%)

Q3 2020

$37.1 billion

10%

Data source: Alphabet.

Google is a massive business. Its sheer size alone should dictate slower growth in its primary ad business. However, digital advertising overall is still in the process of replacing traditional marketing and could reach some $1 trillion in global annual spending by 2030 (up from some $320 billion expected in 2020).

Though Google is coming under increased pressure from competition and regulatory scrutiny, its core business still operates in a growing industry. As it laps effects from COVID-19 -- especially in the first half of 2021 -- Google's ad-sales growth rates could accelerate.

Image source: Getty Images.

Google isn't just about ads anymore, though. It's also a fast-growing player in the cloud-computing market. Cloud revenue made up 7.5% of Google's total revenue during Q3 2020, although it trails behind leaders Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in size.

But at current growth rates, Google could play a serious catch-up game in 2021. Cloud grew 45% year over year in Q3 to $3.44 billion, and the company hasn't been shy about wanting to keep that trajectory going. Amazon's AWS segment hauled in $11.6 billion in Q3 2020 but grew "only" 29% year over year. In its comparable quarter, Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" segment (which includes Azure) grew 20% to $13 billion. Google is clearly making some headway expanding its presence in modern IT infrastructure and services.

More important than the growth, though, is profitability for Google Cloud. Company CEO Sundar Pichai said Cloud will be reported as a stand-alone segment starting in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Since Alphabet has been investing heavily in Google Cloud, it's expected the segment still operates at a loss. However, as it continues to expand and reaches a more efficient scale, look for Cloud to become a meaningful contributor to Google's overall profitability next year. After all, AWS comprises a majority of Amazon's total operating profits. Google could get a massive boost from Cloud, too, as it expands.

Something similar could take place with Google's "Other Bets" collection of start-ups. For clarification, this is different from "Google Other," the large and growing segment (revenue of $5.48 billion, up 35% in Q3 2020) including YouTube TV and Music subscriptions, Pixel and Nest hardware, and Google Play store app sales. "Other Bets," by contrast, are small operations attempting to disrupt big industries.

Some of these start-ups are well-known, like autonomous-vehicle company Waymo and life-sciences researcher Verily. During the third quarter, Other Bets generated just $178 million in revenue but racked up $1.1 billion in operating losses. It's a big number that Google is able to absorb, thanks to its highly profitable search-based ad bread and butter.

However, some of these moonshot companies could be nearing more mainstream commercialization -- like, for example, self-driving vehicles and life-science research. If these companies start to make that transition from start-up to viable business, Google could experience further transformation from internet search ad company to a more diversified technologist.

Even in a less-than-ideal year for digital ads and continual investment into high-growth segments like Cloud and a myriad of start-ups, Google generated operating income of $25.6 billion through the first three quarters of 2020 -- good for an operating profit margin of 25.6%. A rebound in growth in ads and its smaller segments reaching more efficient scale could send profits even higher in 2021. Those catalysts could keep the stock flying high in the new year.

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3 Catalysts for Google in 2021 - The Motley Fool

In the season of Secret Santa, and last-minute Christmas shopping or new years gifts, the option of shopping with e-commerce is a godsend. And Amazon is the god of e-commerce in the world outside of China. It has overnight delivery; you almost always get what you are looking for; and the prices are low to the point of being unbelievable. The user interface, even on a tiny mobile screen, is a pleasant experience, and it even nudges you with suggestions to buy other stuff. With wide choices, low prices, overnight home delivery, quality assured, and an easy returns and refunds policy, its a customers delight. So what could go wrong?

Well, it looks like the tech giant is running into rough weather with anti-trust regulators all across the world. Last month, the European Commission issued a charge sheet that Amazon was abusing its dominance, and using its muscle to hurt small businesses. Specifically that it uses huge amounts of data generated by transactions on its platform to kill competitors. The European authorities are also investigating whether Amazons algorithms do product placement unfairly. In other words, when you are searching for a toaster, or a frying pan, it displays those vendors on top who have paid extra, giving them an unfair advantage. Of course, Amazon has denied the charges. It claims that it has, in fact, helped small businesses to sell to a wide customer base, by providing the e-commerce platform.

Jeff Bezoz, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai

Not only does Amazon have immense data on buyer behaviour and preferences -- which it can use against the very merchants who sell on it -- but it can also act as a gatekeeper, choosing who can or cannot sell their wares on its platform. This is the potential for monopolistic power and its abuse.

It is this gatekeeper role of not just Amazon, but also Facebook, Google and Apple, which are under scrutiny by the European competition regulator. All of these companies act as marketplaces, and have their own, non-transparent rules, about who gets entry and who does not, thereby effectively abusing their power over millions of vendors. A US anti-trust watchdog, too, is pursuing its own investigation. At least 10 states in the US have filed charges against Facebook and Google about their anti competitive and collusive practices over the space they allocate and charge for advertising. As such Google commands two-thirds of its global revenues from advertising, long having eclipsed the revenues of television and newspapers. Events like Facebook Live or those on Twitter make them de facto broadcasters with virtually very little regulation of content, unlike those who are conventional, licensed broadcasters.

Facebook has already faced accusations of regulating content that can infringe on free speech, of being too cozy with governments and facilitating undue and unfair influence on elections. The electoral spending via Facebook and other social media is not subject to the same spotlight and scrutiny as that of conventional lobby groups.

Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon

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Amazon, Facebook, Google and the question of trust - Mumbai Mirror

The new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has announced a three-year agreement with Google to host data from astronomy observations in the cloud.

Rubin and Google said that the collaboration, made public Dec. 9, would bring in a new generation of "large-scale scientific computing" projects that can be shared worldwide with Internet services.

Google will host Rubin's Interim Data Facility (IDF) that will collect preliminary data until the observatory becomes fully operational in 2023. The data will eventually be available to hundreds of scientists ahead of the prime observing phase of Rubin, known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST. (The observatory itself was previously called LSST, short for "Large Synoptic Survey Telescope," before it was renamed earlier this year.)

Related: 3,200 megapixels! The camera heart of future Vera Rubin Observatory snaps record-breaking 1st photo

"By using an established and trusted cloud infrastructure, we've been able to stay on track to ensure we'll be ready to deliver high-impact science to our community when the telescope, camera, and data system are ready," Bob Blum, acting Rubin Observatory operations director, said in an emailed Google statement. "LSST is the one experiment that gathers data on the solar system, variable and exploding stars, the stars that make up our Milky Way galaxy, and the expansion of the universe itself."

The interim data set will be so large that users will use a browser-based science platform to use the information, avoiding the need for downloads, Google said in the statement. The LSST is expected to generate 500 petabytes (roughly 500,000 terabytes) of information, and the storage space of the interim data set was not released.

"The advancements we're seeing in astronomy point to the growing appetite for data that can only be supported by the cloud's scale and speed," Mike Daniels, vice president of Google Cloud's global public sector, said in the same statement. "By collaborating with Google Cloud, Rubin Observatory can build in more flexibility for the rising demand of astronomical data, while taking advantage of low-cost cloud data storage. This means Rubin Observatory can use more funds toward discoveries, instead of IT."

Related: A 'tsunami' for astrophysics: New Gaia data reveals the best map of our galaxy yet

Members of the science community can start accessing the interim data set in late 2021. Rubin is funded through the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and with private funding raised by the LSST Corporation.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Rubin Observatory and Google will store astronomy data in the cloud - Space.com

Google's Santa Tracker is here.

As Christmas arrives around the world, Google has turned on its Santa tracker for following jolly Saint Nick as he delivers gifts across the globe.

The Santa tracker site has a real-time visual representation of Santa's path. Google also has a running counter for the number of gifts delivered and an update as to the next stop on Santa's journey. In a nod to a more sober reality, Kris Kringle is wearing a purple face mask to keep himself and others safe from COVID-19 (though he apparently already got adose of vaccine).

The site is similar to NORAD's Santa tracker, the long-running annual project of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Google's tracker doubles as a cute way to entertain kids with a handful of mini-games including one called Elf Gliderwhere, on a computer, you use a keyboard to serve as one of Santa's elves on a hang glider, pressing the space bar to drop presents into chimneys while avoiding obstacles.

1. EnterSantatracker.google.comon your mobile or desktop browser. Mobile users can tap to add Santa to their home screen.

There, now Santa's photo-ready.

2. You can passively see Santa's current location and explore the globe. If you get too far, tap the icon of the Santa hat to immediately snap back to the jolly one on his sleigh.

3. Click or tap the "hamburger" menu of three horizontal lines in the upper left corner of your screen to interact with Santa and his friends in different ways. For example, you can make Santa presentable for a selfie and get in a snowball fight.

4. Keep the sound on to hear festive music and elf laughter as Santa cuts his path around the globe, or click or tap the mute button if you prefer to enjoy Father Christmas in silence.

5. Keep scrolling down to play winter and Christmas-related games with animated elves. Google's website says the site will remain live through December.

If you subscribe to only one CNET newsletter, this is it. Get editors' top picks of the day's most interesting reviews, news stories and videos.

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Google's Santa Tracker is live as Christmas begins around the world. 5 fun ways to use it - CNET

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus and Google.

Meathead Goldwyn has some long-standing beef with Google.

For the past nine years, the pitmaster and publisher of AmazingRibs.comone of the internets leading authorities on all things barbecuehas warned against the tyranny of Google recipe rankings, which determine how and what millions of Americans cook.

Among other things, Googles algorithms decide which versions of canonical dishes get prime billing in its search results. The search engine cherry-picks and spotlights only the culinary data points it considers important in its rich result links and recipe carousels. Google even displays a handy five-star rating alongside recipes from most major food sites, providing a quick shorthand for quality and eliminating the need to click through infinite variations of a dish. If youre searching for cornbread recipes, youre probably just going to click the one with five stars or the most ratings next to it.

But recipe ratings, like much of the structured data that Google privileges in its search results, often say less about the caliber of a recipe than they do about who published it. Sites supply the user-generated star ratings that Google pulls, and there are plenty of ways to skew them. Doing so doesnt change a sites place in the search rankings, but it does affect how many searchers click throughand, arguably, exposes the emptiness of the entire rating system.

To test that notion, I scraped more than 2,000 Google-ranked recipe ratings from a dozen popular cooking sites in early December. As of this writing, AllRecipes.comthe distinctly unglamorous, crowdsourced recipe bank best known for its users creative use of canned soupscommands higher average star ratings than both NYT Cooking and Bon Apptit do.

I think I was the canary in the coal minethe first food writer to warn about how Google displays recipes in search results, said Goldwyn, who first wrote about the pain and panic of the sites recipe search system in 2011. Since then, he has watched some of his sites best-loved recipes slide off the first page of Google results, supplanted by oven-baked barbecue and crockpot ribs.

But its Googles world, and we just live in it, Goldwyn said. If youre trying to make a living on the internet, you have to worship Google.

Its difficult to overstate the power Google has over food publishers: Most major food and recipe sites derive two-thirds or more of their visitors from the search engine, said Faith Durand, a digital food publishing veteran and editor in chief of the Kitchn. The holy grail, for recipe sites of any size, is the featured recipe carousel at the top of Googles search results page.

Those three slots on desktop, and four on mobile, earn 75 percent of the clicks on any given search term, from barbecue to vegan tomato soup, said Liane Walker, the managing director of the membership-based consultancy Foodie Digital. Walkers two-year-old firm is one of several agencies in a growing microindustry aimed at helping food bloggers boost their search engine optimization. As the food publishing field has grown more crowded, publishers have fought harder to access the legions of home cooks using Google search.

Her lifes work, Walker said of one client, without a trace of irony, has gone into getting on the first page for sourdough bread. It took six years.

Like all SEO strategies, the process of ranking a recipe on Google is both archaic and tedious. Food publishers must first play by all the regular rules of the Google algorithm, accounting for factors like site load time (fast), dwell time (high), and backlinks (numerous).

To land a recipe in the almighty carousel, publishers also need to adhere to an exacting set of data-formatting specifications called recipe schema, which standardize recipes across websites so that Google and other tech companies can parse them. Ratings are one possible attribute of recipe schema; so too are yield, nutrition, ingredients, and cook time, which Google also surfaces in rich search resultslinks jazzed up with photos and other contextual information, which tend to see far more clicks than their plane Jane neighbors.

But theres been little scrutiny of the quality and the usefulness of Googles recipe data, even as it ferries tens of millions of home cooks around the web. Star ratings are particularly suspect, as they are collected, moderated, and supplied by site publisherswho arguably have nothing but incentive to inflate them. (In a statement, Google said it penalizes publishers if we find that a website has intended to deceive people with review snippets.)

High ratings dont always mean a recipe is good, and low ratingsof the sort that plague Martha Stewart, for instancedont mean a recipe isbad.

Even if a recipes ratings do reflect the opinions of its reviewers, thats often less a measure of recipe quality than a sign of how skilled a publisher is at ginning up rave reviews from fans and disincentivizing bad reviews from critics. Sites that dont actively moderate their comments sections, for instance, tend to have far lower recipe ratings than those that doa product of both healthier comment section culture and fewer fake or drive-by reviews.

But theres no industry standard for what counts as a fair or ethical level of moderation; every publication plays by its own rules. At Foodie Digital, for instance, Walker recommends her bloggers delete ratings and reviews in cases where the commenter is abusive or has significantly altered a recipe, and that they discourage bad scores by requiring a comment whenever a reviewer leaves a rating below five stars. That latter feature comes standard in Recipe Maker, the most popular web design plug-in for generating recipe schema.

At AmazingRibs.com, meanwhilewhere recipes averaged 3.77 stars in my samplea message asks readers not to rate a recipe until after theyve cooked it but doesnt require that they comment or log in. At New York Times Cooking (4.46 stars), newsroom editors cull abuse and unproductive comments, said Emily Weinstein, the verticals editor. But editors dont touch recipe ratings and have no way to know if reviewers cooked the recipe before rating it.

In other words, high ratings dont always mean a recipe is good, and low ratingsof the sort that plague domestic empress Martha Stewart, for instancedont mean a recipe is bad. Stewart averages 3.49 stars across the first 150 recipe results for Martha Stewart Living, a particularly poor showing when you consider that online reviews, on balance, tend to be pretty generous.

Does that mean Stewarts team of food editors and recipe developers cant cook? That her audience, which skews older, is not sufficiently motivated to leave reviews? Or does it really signal, as Walker suspects, that Marthas publisher hasnt adequately resourced comment section moderation? In a statement, Meredith Corp., which publishes Martha Stewart Living, said that the company requires users to log in before rating recipes and that it has filtering and content moderation capabilities to keep things from getting abusive or explicit.

There are so many confounding factors around this data, said Durand, of the Kitchn, where recipe raters are required to log in and the average recipe earns around 4.3 stars. I would, no pun intended, always take recipe ratings with a grain of salt.

But to Goldwyn, the AmazingRibs guy, almost any attempt to convert recipes into signals for search risks cheapening them. He hates the apparent widgetization of something he considers a craft. The great MFK Fisher would not be found by Google, Goldwyn likes to say, by which he means that a lot of classic recipes would not perform well in an industry that demands teams of data engineers, community moderators, and search engine consultants.

And yet, Goldwyn understands theres no use resisting Google. In the past five years alone, hes spent $300,000 rebuilding his site to Googles specifications. In January, hell relaunch the site again, this time using Recipe Maker, which promises clean recipe schema and more intensive moderation of reviews and star ratings.

Its interesting, Goldwyn said archly. Engineers are telling chefs how to write and publish recipes.

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Mix. Bake. Game the SEO. - Slate

Perhaps the most influential executive at Google is a man who cant write a line of code.

That is Kent Walker, the companys chief legal officer and head of global affairs, whose role puts him at the center of the search giants antitrust challenges. It also gives him the power to lead the defense that will determine whether one of the worlds dominant conglomerates is able to keep growingor gets clipped.

Google faces formidable legal challenges. Its parent, Alphabet Inc., was sued by federal prosecutors in October for allegedly abusing monopoly power in its flagship search engine, and this week state attorneys general added their own pair of lawsuits targeting digital advertising, among other areas. Google broadly denies the claims and says it will contest them in court.

While some of the specific allegations are new, Googles use of its power has been under scrutiny for at least a decade. Under Mr. Walker, who became chief legal officer in 2018, it has fended off inquiries in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and the U.K. without sustaining a meaningful blow. The European Union made the biggest splash, levying total fines of more than $10 billion, but since the first of the EUs three decisions against Google landed in 2017, the companys revenue and stock price have shot up by about half.

Mr. Walker, a 14-year company veteran, has long favored providing regulators with reams of data and paperwork, according to current and former employees, yet those tactics might be wearing thin.

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Meet the Lawyer Trying to Keep Google From Being Broken Up - The Wall Street Journal

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Todays column is written byJay Friedman, president and partner atGoodway Group.

Three government lawsuits have now been filed against Google in the span of two months with the two most recent being filed by states attorneys general this week. Slightly over-simplified, a summary of the claims are:

Well focus here on what CMOs and CEOs should consider, and if any action should be taken as a result. As an important disclaimer, each of these lawsuits puts forth claims and alleges actions but the full facts are not out. Despite this, the court of public opinion and shareholders will start to demand answers assuming most of the claims are true. In this reality, what are CMOs and CEOs to do now?

Here are four areas of consideration.

Lets say the claims are true that Google built preference into its auctions and inventory flow that advantaged its platform over the rest of the industry. The suit lays out ways Google allegedly advantaged itself in ways that would lead marketers to get superior results on Google. Purely considering performance, one option is for a CMO to say, Then I might as well use Google as long as I can! But for some, it wont be so simple, and other consideration areas will need to be examined.

Can we trust what Google says about its performance?

Many organizations use DV360, SA360, and YouTube for media, and GA360 for measurement and attribution. Those numbers have been single sources of truth. But, if Google repeatedly told publishers, exchanges, and the market at large one thing, but was really doing something else, what else doesnt a CMO or CEO know? Just like any relationship, if trust comes into question in one area, all areas must be scrutinized. The suit alleges marketers should have experienced significantly better performance while using the Google stack. Should campaign metrics reported by Google be questioned?

There certainly is no evidence that Google falsified metrics. However, in the depths of digital media metrics there are countless ways measurement can be generous one way or another. Most CMOs and CEOs are completely unaware of the complexity of deciding when an ad counts as served. There are still meaningful discrepancies between DSPs, exchanges, and publisher ad servers.

Does having all of these parties on one tech stack eliminate the mechanics that cause discrepancies? This is where we must lift our heads up. If the metrics youre seeing in Google directionally align with your business results (i.e., campaign run to sell a widget says it sold more widgets, and you did in fact sell more widgets,) then you should trust the numbers you're seeing. Of course, that goes for any platform.

Is there really a choice to avoid Google?

No matter an organizations stance on the validity of the lawsuit or claims, in no scenario do I believe its an option to discontinue working with Google altogether. Search is a must for any marketer with a video strategy, and it would be unwise to ignore YouTube. Site-side analytics software is deeply ingrained into most organizations, and so an organization using Google Analytics will likely be using Google Analytics for the foreseeable future. Even programmatically, the Google Display Network/AdX inventory makes up such a large percent of programmatic traffic that to avoid this inventory altogether would be on principle in spite of performance or pragmatism, not simply instead of.

Can you plan beyond the next quarter?

Its clear now that state, federal and even international governments intend to do something about big tech. As marketers, we have to assume that five years from now, the major platforms we use today will look different as a result of government action. What we dont know is, how different, and in what ways?

How much time should a brand or agency dedicate to learning alternative forms of targeting or even other platforms? As the changes come into effect, marketers have to decide on the trade-offs between productivity performance today and future-readiness. For organizations that live quarter to quarter, focusing on this quarter is probably the right way to go! For organizations that take a longer view and balance future-planning with current results, becoming familiar and proficient at all major platforms should be on every CMOs to-do list.

One final ending thought: Anyone in America can sue anyone at any time, for anything. We owe it to ourselves to do our own research, probe companies that come under investigation, and get answers for ourselves. In my experience, its the brands that take a level-headed, evidence-based approach to all of their marketing that end up with the best long-term results.

Follow Jay Friedman (@jaymfriedman) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

Originally posted here:

What CMOs and CEOs Need To Consider Before We Know The Facts About The Google Lawsuits - AdExchanger