Just tell us what role you've played for the US
government.
Sure.
So, you know, I've been in search for 20 years.
I went to the closing arguments back in May.
The decision came out in in August and I wrote
a memo talking about how there could be behavioral remedies
that could fix the, the, the search and the advertising
search advertising markets.
The DOJ saw the memos, asked me to, you know,
speak with them a few times about what we're doing.
And then you've seen in there proposed final judgement in
order.
Some of the ideas are in there, as well as
some of the ideas around Chrome divestiture, Android divestiture, Some
of that's around making sure that that Google would comply
with the behavioural remedies.
And so this is a $200 billion market and it's
been a monopoly.
It's been running for a while.
So getting the remedy right is difficult and then making
sure that there's compliance will be the next step.
Your business is in the world of placing advertising, but
not having to depend just purely on a few key
dominant forces in search, right?
Would some of the things being discussed at the moment,
some of the remedies, dramatic as they are, help your
benefit and benefit your business?
Sure.
You know, there's, I think a lot of folks that
would be able to invest in this, in this industry.
It's been, I think such an adult at Microsoft called
it a no fly zone for investment for about 20
years.
So we've been, you know, working where we can around
the edges to help browsers and large shopping apps create
native search experiences.
And we think that is the future.
And obviously we have a a little bit of a
head start, but there will be a lot of entrance
in this space, both from the advertising side and on
the on the search results side, especially around AI next
Gen.
search agents.
That's really the future.
And that's that's kind of the irony of the whole
situation.
Many feel actually Google's never been under such competitive threat
than they are now, particularly when it comes to us
perhaps donning Google searched 1 and instead using ChatGPT.
You might also they'll be using AI overviews and a
Gemini offering.
Just from your perspective selling off a Chrome, can you
see anyone in the market actually buying that apart from
an open AI for example?
Sure.
I think there's other folks that would be interested in
buying Chrome.
It's the largest browser in the world.
I think with the DOJ's initial proposed remedy really set
off was the first shot of browser WAR 3.0.
OK, so I think you'll see other browsers.
You know, the Duckduck goes the Firefox of the world,
the Braves, those folks will be more to the front
forefront.
They'll be new browsers coming out, perhaps really built around
Gen.
AI and the the idea there is that, you know,
if we have a lot of entry points and we're
still able to have some Google monetization, some Google results
side by side, that's going to be the best, most
innovative experience for users and searchers.
It's not that it's an all or nothing.
Either you get Google and you've got to take Gemini
or you can use something else that's a little bit
more innovative or trying something different.
The idea that we all go to the search engine
result page of Google and basically got A1 size fits
all solution.
That's I think what the real, you know, detriment is
to to consumers and to users of the search monopoly
we have currently in place.
But the problem is it's very expensive for the infrastructure
build around an offering such as search and Google Chrome
as an access point to search.
Would anyone ever be able to offer such a great
product for consumers without the huge deep pockets that a
Google has?
Exactly.
So half the clicks that Google sells, not advertisers start
on 3rd party sites like Apple, like Samsung.
The question is, can can they get access to Google's
results into their ads and then curate their own experiences
with perhaps instead of Gemini, a ChatGPT search agent or
with other ads or with other results or ranking and
changing how the rankings work.
That's really what we're talking about is allowing for that
innovation take to take hold, not forcing, you know, force
funneling every user to search result page of Google in
order to take advantage of Google's assets.
So the idea is, I think it's both.
It's not an either or situation.
And that would be the the remedy that I think
gets us into a more innovative space and also brings
competition to the market, which is at the end of
the day what the goal is.