Digest 10/26/2020

What the Google antitrust case means for media, RIP Quibi, and more.

THE ANTITRUST CASE AGAINST GOOGLE IS A REMIX

The Department of Justice last Tuesday brought an antitrust lawsuit against online media ad buyer Google, claiming the company’s dominance as a search engine is anti-competitive and illegal. More specifically, the DOJ charges that the tech giant broke antitrust laws by cutting deals with device makers like Apple and Samsung that have made Google the default search engine on their devices, per the lawsuit. 

What I found most interesting about the suit was the revelation that Google and Apple essentially form something of a mega-monopoly, having taken steps to function as a single company — in fact, the lawsuit alleges, after a 2018 meeting about how the companies could better work together, an Apple employee wrote to a Google employee, “Our vision is that we work as if we are one company.” Google pays Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion per year in order to be the default search engine on Apple devices, according to the suit.

In short, the DOJ is alleging that Google has harmed consumers, competitors, and advertisers by asserting its dominance and pushing out competition. 

This lawsuit has an important precedent, though it doesn’t provide a clear path to victory for the DOJ. The department in 1998 brought an antitrust case against Microsoft that bears some similarities to the action against Google. Just as Google has been accused of making itself the default search engine on devices, Microsoft was accused of making its Internet Explorer browser (were we ever so young??) the default browser on PCs. A judge ruled that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws and needed to be broken up, but Microsoft appealed the decision, the appeals court ruled in their favor, and Microsoft still exists today. The company reached a settlement with the US government that included some restrictions — including that Microsoft could not force PC manufacturers to work with them exclusively.

CNBC spoke to lawyers involved in the Microsoft case, and they say there are some key differences: while it was shown that Microsoft was being blatantly coercive in its attempts to destroy its competitor Netscape Navigator, Google’s tactics are subtler. The search engine is simply the default on devices, but users have the capability to change the default or use other search engines if they wish. There was also a clear victim in Microsoft’s case (Netscape), whereas the current suit’s claims of harm are more amorphous — consumers are being harmed, the suit claims, as are prospective competitors. 

Google is just one part of the ongoing challenge to regulate big tech companies. The lawsuit against Google comes on the heels of an antitrust report by congressional lawmakers that also condemns Amazon, Apple, and Facebook for anti-competitive practices and recommends new laws that would break up big tech companies and make acquisitions more difficult. One concern about Google, cited in the lawsuit, is its total dominance of online advertising — it is nearly impossible for websites buying and selling ads to avoid using Google. Media companies face the same conundrum with Facebook, a company that many find themselves dependent on despite its toxicity. Facebook and Google are currently at war with the Australian government over the issue: Australia’s competition regulatory commission is attempting to force the tech giants to pay publishers for using their content, and Facebook has threatened to block news from the platform in retaliation. 

The US case against Google shows some real willingness on the government’s part to do something about tech monopolies — though, as Kara Swisher argued, it could have done something sooner and repeatedly chose to do nothing. 

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RIP QUIBI (2020–2020)

I downloaded Quibi, the streaming app specializing in “quick bites” entertainment made to be viewed on one’s phone, while in quarantine in Brooklyn at the height of the pandemic’s first wave. I watched a reality show in which Jennifer Lopez tearfully gave some poors a million dollars on the condition they give half of it to someone else, and so on, setting into motion a chain of giving smaller and smaller amounts. The brevity of the episodes underscored the cynical nature of a show meant to showcase how awesome it is when benevolent rich people bless us with minuscule fractions of their wealth. There was no time to develop any familiarity with the gift receivers; the whole thing felt so profoundly soulless it was difficult to even muster happiness for them. I then tried an episode of a show in which Anna Kendrick talks to her boyfriend’s anthropomorphized sex doll and felt even worse than I had before. All in all, a dispiriting experience.

Unsurprisingly, the company is shutting down after only six months, plagued by low viewership that founder Jeffrey Katzenberg initially blamed on the coronavirus pandemic. Our own Kyle Chayka, in writing about Quibi for Frieze shortly after the app’s launch, observed that the platform, with its “glossy inhumanity,” seemed to fundamentally misunderstand why we look at our phones in the first place. 

Anyway, here’s a paragraph from the Wall Street Journal’s report on the shutdown: 

During a video call with employees Wednesday, an emotional Mr. Katzenberg suggested Quibi staffers listen to the song “Get Back Up Again,” sung by actress Anna Kendrick in the animated film Trolls, to buoy their spirits, according to people familiar with the call.

Irrelevant, hollow, baffling sense of timing, deeply weird but not in a good way, and ultimately unhelpful? Seems about right for Quibi (and for something that lived and died in 2020)!

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Desus & Mero writer Ziwe, who has made a name for herself interviewing celebrities on her deliciously cringe-inducing Instagram live show, is getting her own show on Showtime! 

— Molly Stern, the publisher at Crown who in 2018 released Michelle Obama’s blockbuster memoir Becoming, has left the company and is starting her own publishing firm called Zando. Zando will employ a nontraditional (and, I think, of-the-moment) business model: it will team up with individuals, companies, and brands who will promote books to their audiences, rather than relying on retailers and more traditional advertising.

— Nick Quah, podcasting expert (and friend of Study Hall), was profiled on Medium’s Maker! He’s a newsletter success story, having started Hot Pod in 2014 before the podcasting boom. The newsletter now has between 20,000 and 25,000 subscribers and Quah has become a go-to expert on podcasting.

— A damning report in the New York Times focuses on Anna Wintour’s troubled quarter-century reign at Vogue, which has made a show of inclusivity and celebrating Blackness while employees claim she fostered a work culture that sidelined Black talent.

— Repeller (FKA Man Repeller), the site first started by Leandra Medine Cohen as a style blog, is shutting down. The site had just relaunched in early September, rebranded simply as Repeller, so the timing of the shutdown is odd. (If you worked for Repeller and want to talk to me (anonymously), shoot me an email at [email protected].)

— Ben Smith’s media column this week focused on the Trump team’s blundering attempts to get the Wall Street Journal to publish a piece based on dubious evidence of wrongdoing in Hunter Biden’s lobbying, which were stymied in part by — who else? — Rudy Giuliani leaking a similar set of documents to the New York Post.