A huge, unusual, and unappreciated change in 2025 is in motion that will create a vast prosperous opportunity for investors, businesses, professionals, and America. It’s a pending changeover from a U.S. info-data monopoly & monopsony, to restoring a competitive U.S. info-data free marketplace.
Investors, businesses, & IT/AI/IP/VC professionals & entrepreneurs can get ahead of a big pending, growth/innovation/investment curve, of a U.S. info-data changeover prosperity opportunity.
The market is missing the likely outcome of the 2024 Federal Court ruling that Google is a search & text-ad monopoly and is unlawfully maintaining it, warranting a 2025 break-up remedy.
The market is badly misreading Google remedy risk as very low when it’s very high. Investment analysis is historically biased that the future is like the past. Not always. This is a rare discontinuous change and Google inflection point. The last structural breakup was 1984.
All 65 Wall Street top investment analysts recommend Google as a strong buy, buy, or hold. Evidently none think big impending 2025 monopoly break-up risk is not a buy signal.
I’ve seen this conflicted group think before. In 2000, when every investment analyst had a WorldCom investment banking conflict of interest and had to rate it a ‘buy,’ I was the lone independent analyst calling WorldCom’s demise at $140b. It was clear the DOJ would stop WorldCom from buying Sprint and end WorldCom’s roll-up growth model, and it did.
I also am familiar with anticompetitive roll-up growth models. From 2001 to 2025, Google has bought a record 261 companies, 10 a year! Evidently, Google’s innovation monopolization strategy is: “If at first you don’t succeed, buy whoever did.”
Unlike the 2nd Obama Administration of -- No Google Antitrust Enforcement -- the last three Administration DOJs have been tough on Google antitrust enforcement, just like Judge Mehta’s rulings have proven tough.
Transparent tough purposes of DOJ’s remedy is: “to remove barriers of entry, pry open the monopolized markets to competition, deprive Google of the fruits of its violations by providing competitors access to scale dependent data inputs for both search & ads.”
Google’s proposed remedy is a self-preferencing joke. It would block any competition from a “mobile device manufacturer or wireless carrier,” i.e. big potential competitors. It calls for a conflicted, Google “Internal Compliance Officer,” a Google fox guards the remedy compliance henhouse. It prohibits “third party rights” to block any other remedies.
The likely outcome is a DOJ consensus, court-ordered, game-changing, break-up remedy of Google in August of 2025, that requires Google to license/syndicate its unequaled search info & text-ad data to competitors for little or no cost, to spread U.S. info-data competition.
From a monopolized info-data hoard, to an unlimited info-data innovation competition.
In 2007, I testified the Google-DoubleClick merger would be the search/ad monopoly it is.
In 2017, I predicted the Trump DOJ would take the Google antitrust lead from the FTC & did.
In 2020, I predicted Trump DOJ’s Google search monopoly antitrust suit would win & it did.
In 2025, I now predict Judge Mehta will rule largely in favor of the consensus DOJs’ proposed final remedy, and start it in August 2025, and keep it in place during the ~5yr appeals process.
(Note: Judge Mehta’s Google remedy hearing is April 21- May 9, 2025. His final decision is early August 2025.)
Info-data are as essential to the Internet, IT & AI, as rare earth minerals are for chips & devices; and as oil is to a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, money is to the Federal Reserve & gold is to Fort Knox.
Google is uniquely important & valuable in proving info is power and data illuminates insight:
Only Google has a mission to organize the world’s information and has fully achieved it.
Google is where: users go for info; publishers go for advertisers & advertisers go for users.
Google can track all: user online data, traffic, and demand; advertiser supply of ads and demographics; & what exact content is viewed by whom, when, where and how much.
Empowering U.S. info-data free/fair competition is a trillion dollar+ prosperity opportunity:
Information, data, and metadata are also essential enabling inputs for America’s outputs via:
The public square/free-speech/marketplace of ideas, info-innovation, information competition, data-driven decisions & ideation, economy, commerce, finance, trade, markets, start-ups, technologies, IT & AIs, IP owners, society, culture, & government.
Soon, the ultimate gatekeeper of information & data, Google, is getting gated for the first time.
Everyone else gets their pre-Google, 1st Amendment info-data freedoms back, i.e., “Freedom of speech, religion, press, to assemble, & to petition Government.”
This impending changeover from Google monopoly to market competition compares to the 1996 Telecom Act’s changeovers: regulated monopolies to market competition, national to global, analog to digital, narrowband to broadband, slow to fast, paid to free, commerce to ecommerce, landline to mobile, and intellectual property to open source & fair use.
Entrepreneurs, innovators, start-ups regain market freedom to innovate/compete, via a changeovers: from info-data monopoly to a fair info-data level playing field, globalization to America First, general info-data to specific niches & one to many, one player to a variety.
In the year ahead, DOJ’s 2025 remedy for Google’s gatekeeping search/text-ad monopoly could:
Defang Google’s multiple unlawful monopoly and anticompetitive practices by restoring market competition, promoting economic growth, innovation, privacy, & consumer choice.
Shape-up Google’s Big Brother Inc. censorship, surveillance & manipulation to restore freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly & petitioning Government.
Level-up a winner-take-all, info-data market, into a competitive & fair level playing field.
Create more and different new IT/AI jobs than Google has cut in recent years.
Empower more IT/AI innovation, investment, venture capital, start-ups, unicorns, & IPOs.
My next pieces will address for subscribers:
Structural separation model that solves the necessary economic separations sans business conflicts.
Summarize and flags likely winners/losers from Judge Mehta’s expected final Google remedy ruling.
Provides chart posts that succinctly organize the Google’s hoard of information, data, in many different dimensions, and how it affects market entry, competition, privacy, piracy, security, etc.
All focused-on facilitating/empowering start-up info-data ideas to empower success competitively.
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