Google Lawsuit & Layoffs
There seems to be trouble in paradise as Google is hit with a lawsuit from the Justice Department days after they announced cutting 6% of their global workforce.
The Justice Department and eight states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming the tech giant unlawfully monopolizes the market for online advertisements.
This follows an announcement made days earlier from Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company, that Google would be laying off 12,000 employees.
While definitely newsworthy headlines for the advertising platform we have all grown to need and love, what does this mean for you and your schools marketing efforts?
First, let's summarize the two L’s and then break down their possible impacts for you.
The Lawsuit
The 155-page suit alleges that Google has used its influence to shut down competitors, manipulated auction mechanics, and forced advertisers and publishers to use its products. Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that Google has "corrupted legitimate competition" in the ad tech industry. The Justice Department is requesting a federal judge to force Google to break up its advertising segment from the rest of the company claiming Google used its dominance to hinder competition.
The Layoffs
Google laid off 12,000 of its 187,000 employees, 6% of its workforce, as a result of a "rigorous review" carried out by the company due to the changing economic climate. This is the biggest-ever round of layoffs for Google and is part of a larger trend of major tech companies tightening their belts and cutting jobs due to the pandemic and the rapid rise of A.I. applications, like Open.AI’s ChatGPT-3 released in late November.
What this means for you
While this is somewhat unknown territory for Google, it's safe to say that there are several effects these changes could have on anyone using the Google Ad platform.
Customer Support
Given the size of the layoffs we can most likely expect a shortage or reconfiguration of manpower in a variety of departments, including customer support. You will definitely be having more conversations with A.I. personas rather than real ones so learning how to ask the right questions the right way will become essential. Whether this will become a more efficient way to support the plethora of Google Ads users is still unknown, but the direction is very clear in this regard, A.I. is taking over.
Advertisement Costs
Much of the impetus for the recent layoffs revolved around balance sheets simply not adding up in future models. Google’s CEO made clear their intent on making strong investments into their AI technologies and historically, companies tend to leverage their profits from other products or services. Meaning, we all might be paying a little more to get in front of our prospective families.
Google’s Monopoly on Search
While Google is making a very strong and public pivot to A.I. technologies, Microsoft has as well. After becoming one of the largest investors in Open.ai, the A.I. company that designed and released ChatGPT technology, Microsoft announced its intention on using the GPT A.I. tech in their Bing Search Engine. If you have played around with ChatGPT lately you can understand why this would be a huge problem for Google Search if they don't add in their solution for it.
