UK’s competition authority has issued its preliminary report. It’s a 280 page holiday read but appears to mirror international concerns very much focused on Google and Facebook including their unique surveillance advertising models. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5dfa0580… 
In what healthy market would this be allowed?
Here is the full package for the interim report including press release for those who want to dig in today. gov.uk/cma-cases/onli…
And to be clear, there are 100s of pages in report (and don’t miss the appendices! ht @MattRogerson). We’ll be analyzing over coming days. It’s an amazing compilation of analysis and questions absolutely devastating to Google and Facebook while DOJ, AGs, FTC, House dig in here.
This.
And again, report recognizes behind this unique dominance is the core business model of unbridled data collection in order to deliver microtargeted advertising based on our lives (on and offline).
This is a Key visual. Very good they’re illustrating the duopoly are the only two who collect more data passively when we’re not even choosing to interact with their products than when we do. Many miss this. It’s why GDPR and CA properly enforced threaten the duopoly.
We made this point about Google and Facebook in our comments to the CMA which are cited in the report. Everyone seems to agree, too.
We also reiterated Google’s unique ability (and shareholder responsibility?) to only let the market in ways which protect and grow its profits.
By the way, lots of orgs commented for this report. A great press move would be to document the orgs who downplayed scrutiny of Google and Facebook. And if this includes your trade group and you don’t work for Google or Facebook, your reputation is being laundered at this point.
These visuals are really well done. Ps all of Google’s current ad campaigns are gaslighting over transparency and control.
ps if you’re a reporter in the digital/tech/media space and you’re not poring over these reports, you’re missing it.
Link to full package again: have at it. gov.uk/cma-cases/onli…
and there is another shoe dropping. “There is an emerging international consensus around the scope of new regulation. A reckoning is coming for the biggest digital platforms.” ft.com/content/67c212…
Which of course brings me back to the internal research Google manufactured to get a headline that if Chrome rolled out tracking prevention like Safari and Firefox, it would kill digital ad $ and news publishers. Google entirely buried the actual study. services.google.com/fh/files/misc/…
I’ve been suspicious since August why G’s original blog post cited the key but questionable data point without a link to the actual study anywhere then buried it in a blog post footnote after @random_walker @jonathanmayer and press challenged entire post. freedom-to-tinker.com/2019/08/23/dec…
