What Did Google Do This Week?
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A LITIGIOUS END TO THE YEAR BEGINS
Google lawyers are earning their stacks right now. Despite some cute product rollouts (Google Chat rolled out its version of Slack’s Huddles, while Gemini’s Imagen 3 introduced a way for players to design their own chess pieces), the courts are seeing all the action. Canada sued Google for alleged anti-competitive conduct, and India launched an investigation into Google’s gaming app policies. Google also faced scrutiny in Europe, offering search result tweaks to comply with antitrust laws.
In other legal battles, Google appealed its antitrust loss to Epic Games and was accused of funding CISPE with millions to influence cloud regulations. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Microsoft were dragged into Google’s search remedies trial through subpoenas.
Elsewhere, the U.S. Justice Department continued to hammer Google over its ad sales monopoly, and former Google and Stripe executives raised $56 million for an AI startup. Meanwhile, questions arose about whether Google Tensor has failed. Amid all this, Christmas came early for developers…Google added new paid features.
SO WHAT?
2024 will go down in Google’s history as a pivotal year for all the wrong reasons. 2025 looks even dicier for the behemoth—and it’s only the beginning. Antitrust lawsuits are grinding, multi-year affairs; seismic shifts will be slow. The U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Google is five years in the making, with a final ruling expected in mid-2025. Add in geopolitical uncertainty, hungry competitors, a weird White House and it’s a recipe for uncertainty. The real question isn’t when the lawsuits end but whether Google can still innovate and grow while battling constraints, fragmented focus, and attacks on all fronts.
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