Microsoft Blames Google For Advertising Monopoly Affecting Traditional Media

In a recent interview with Bloomberg TV, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith continued to advocate further regulatory measures against Google, because the search engine giant has already caused significant damage to the survival of traditional media: “In fact, Google took away With most of the oxygen in the market, these opportunities should have been left to content creators who make a living through advertising, and this is obviously contrary to the open promise of the Internet.”

Brad Smith pointed out that in 2005, U.S. news organizations created nearly $50 billion in advertising sales. But now, this number has dropped to 14 billion U.S. dollars. “So, where did the missing money go? In the earnings report released by Google’s parent company Alphabet yesterday, it can be seen that it has gained nearly $45 billion in digital advertising revenue in a quarter. Essentially, what Google has done is to redesign the network to make it easier to profit from advertising-based content. Customers in need must go through the company’s hands, with the help of tools provided by Google and pay for it.”

Google said that since 2007, it has been sharing revenue with media creators through channels such as YouTube. But there is no doubt that it is this unregulated media that has been accused of contributing to the growing polarization around the world. In response, Microsoft made it clear that it supports relevant Australian legislation to increase the fees that technology giants such as Google must pay to traditional media (especially paper media).

Read More: Google’s New Advertising Tracking Experiment Criticised By Industry Experts

The U.S. Congress is currently challenging Google, Apple, and Facebook’s abuse of their market dominance. Microsoft has always expressed support and avoided being involved in relevant scrutiny.

In this regard, Google argues that its advertising mechanism is actually beneficial to news publishers, accusing Microsoft of abusing their familiar scripts to attack competitors, and lobbying for regulations that are beneficial to their own interests.