Digital Content Next’s Jason Kint on the Google ad tech trial

All eyes are on Judge Leonie Brinkema as she prepares to rule on the biggest tech antitrust trial in 20 years: the U.S. v. Google. Closing arguments have come and gone, and the judge — famous for her speedy disposition of cases — could rule any day now on whether Google monopolized “key digital advertising technologies.”

Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade group for digital content providers, has been following the case throughout and was in the courtroom during the trial. Kint joined The Current Report after closing arguments to share why he thinks practical change will come regardless of the outcome, how journalism could move forward and the next steps from the E.U.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If the judge rules against Google, what impact do you think that that would have on journalism? Especially for these publishers that are having a tough time making money. Does it change anything?

It does. While newsrooms have been pulling back and not able to pay for the reporters, there’s billions of dollars that have been extracted by Google.

And that’s the simple math. The hard math is these are live auctions. What matters is the redistribution of the money and the flow of money. How much of that went back toward the Google mothership through search and through YouTube and all the other ways that they’re able to extract dollars?

Then you probably get to a much more significant number and cost to journalism that’s come from this alleged bad behavior over the last decade.

That alternate reality is definitely a lot to think about.

Yeah, I mean it starts to really get you thinking on all the ways that information gets distributed and reported out and vetted and the impact on all sorts of things that are really important to expose from reporters and newsrooms. It has a larger impact on the world and democracy than just ad tech.

Some in the industry have theorized that regardless of the outcome of the trial, the ad tech marketplace is going to change. Do you agree?

This has exposed a lot of distrust and bad behavior that is warranted toward Google. And the lack of transparency around auctions and changes that they make, I expect that the pressure and just the experience of this will force them to be more proactive.

Google argued that its conduct is “a story of innovation in response to competition.” That’s clearly different than the government’s interpretation. What do you make of that?

It’s a very similar refrain to what happened in the [DOJ’s] search case [against Google]. The argument is, “We have monopoly power where we are as big as we are because we’ve innovated and we’ve been a forward-thinking tech company. And the acquisition and maintenance of that monopoly power is just [because] we have the best product” — rather than the other way of looking at that, as behavior and conduct that gave them that market share and allowed them to squeeze out any sort of real competition and quality.

When are we going to see practical changes coming out of this ad tech case, knowing that there could be years of appeals if the judge rules in favor of the government?

There will inevitably be change in behavior just because there’s enforcers looking over their shoulder. Things that could happen, let’s throw that out there:

We have a new administration coming in, so there could be a more aggressive effort to try to settle these cases in different ways by either Google or the new administration or both. I would fully expect that the E.U. and Brussels, who have an active ad tech case with Google, are likely to put out their own decision, which could involve structural separation. That could happen anytime, frankly. It could happen literally tomorrow.

So how does that play into the mood? Because the E.U. is a really big business for Google. And they’re the one other group that could order structural separation. There’s also legislation that would get inspired by the evidence in this case.

In Texas, there’s the state attorney general case. The new administration and the Republican Senate now having control over Congress, [and could try to push through] the America Act, Senator [Mike] Lee’s bill, that addresses the problems of this case. It basically says you can’t be on both the buy side and the sell side if you’re above a certain size. And so that could happen more quickly now that we’ve seen all this evidence.