Google Is a Monopolist in Online Advertising Tech, Judge Says - The New York Times

Google Is a Monopolist in Online Advertising Tech, Judge Says

"The ruling was the second time in a year that a federal court had found that Google had acted illegally to maintain its dominance.

April 17, 2025Updated 11:29 a.m. ET

The federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., where the Google antitrust trial has been held.Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.88 trillion company and alter its power over the internet.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.

“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” said Judge Brinkema, who also dismissed one portion of the government’s case.

Google has increasingly faced a reckoning over the dominant role its products play in how people get information and conduct business online. Another federal judge ruled in August that the company had a monopoly in online search. He is now considering a request by the Justice Department to break the company up, with a three-week hearing on the matter scheduled to begin Monday.

Judge Brinkema, too, will have an opportunity to force changes to Google’s business. In its lawsuit, the Justice Department pre-emptively asked the court to force Google to sell some pieces of its ad technology business acquired over the years.

Together, the two rulings and their remedies could check Google’s influence and result in a sweeping overhaul of the company, which faces a potential major restructuring.

Google and the Department of Justice did not immediately have comment.

The cases against Google are part of a growing push by regulators to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies, which shape commerce, information and communication online. The Justice Department has sued Apple, arguing that the company made it difficult for consumers to leave its tightly knit universe of devices and software. The Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon, accusing it of squeezing small businesses, and Meta, for killing rivals when it bought Instagram and WhatsApp. The trial against Meta started this week.

President Trump has signaled that his administration will continue taking a tough stance on antitrust for the tech industry, despite efforts by tech executives to court his favor. His choices for F.T.C. chair and the Justice Department’s top antitrust role have said they intend to look closely at the power that tech companies have over online discourse. The Google search case was brought under his first administration.

The ad tech case — U.S. et al. v. Google — was filed in 2023 and concerns an intricate web of programs that sell ad space around the web, like on a news site or a recipes page. The suite of software, which includes Google Ad Manager, conducts split-second auctions to place ads each time a user loads a page. That business generated $31 billion in 2023, or about a 10th of the overall revenue for Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Part of that business stems from the acquisition of DoubleClick, an advertising software company, for $3.1 billion in 2008. Google now has an 87 percent market share in ad-selling technology, according to the government.

The government argued during a three-week trial in September that Google had a monopoly over multiple pieces of technology that are used to conduct these transactions. The company locked publishers into using its software, and was able to take more money off the top of each transaction because of its dominance, the government said.

That hurt websites that produce content and make it available for online for no charge, the government said.

For years, groups representing news organizations, including The New York Times, have argued that the dominance of major tech platforms undermines the media industry. During the trial, the government called witnesses who had worked for publishers including Gannett and News Corp and for ad agencies that buy space online.

“These are the markets that make the free and open internet possible,” said Aaron Teitelbaum, a Justice Department lawyer, during closing arguments in November.

Google countered that it faced competition not just from other ad tech companies but from social networks like TikTok and streaming platforms. In response to the government’s arguments that it had built its ad tech products to work better together, Google’s lawyers argued that its case was bolstered by a 2004 Supreme Court decision that protects a company’s right to choose with whom it does and does not work.

“Google’s conduct is a story of innovation in response to competition,” Karen Dunn, Google’s lead lawyer, said in her closing argument.

David McCabe is a Times reporter who covers the complex legal and policy issues created by the digital economy and new technologies."

Google Is a Monopolist in Online Advertising Tech, Judge Says - The New York Times

Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

​

​

“Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.

April 16, 2025Updated 9:20 p.m. ET

An artist’s conception of a Hycean exoplanet like K2-18b orbiting a red dwarf star.A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan/University of Cambridge

Leer en español

The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s inhabitants remain alone in the cosmos.

Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth. A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.

“It is in no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, at a news conference on Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group’s observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.

“This is a revolutionary moment,” Dr. Madhusudhan said. “It’s the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet.”

The study was published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Other researchers called it an exciting, thought-provoking first step to making sense of what’s on K2-18b. But they were reluctant to draw grand conclusions.

“It’s not nothing,” said Stephen Schmidt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a hint. But we cannot conclude it’s habitable yet.”

If there is extraterrestrial life on K2-18b, or anywhere else, its discovery will arrive at a frustratingly slow pace. “Unless we see E.T. waving at us, it’s not going to be a smoking gun,” said Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Canadian astronomers discovered K2-18b in 2017, while looking through ground-based telescopes in Chile. It was a type of planet commonly found outside our solar system, but one without any analog near Earth that scientists could study closely for clues.

These planets, known as sub-Neptunes, are much bigger than the rocky planets in our inner solar system, but smaller than Neptune and other gas-dominated planets of the outer solar system.

In 2021, Dr. Madhusudhan and his colleagues proposed that sub-Neptunes were covered with warm oceans of water and wrapped in atmospheres containing hydrogen, methane and other carbon compounds. To describe these strange planets, they coined a new term, “Hycean,” from a combination of the words “hydrogen” and “ocean.”

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December 2021 allowed astronomers a closer look at sub-Neptunes and other distant planets.

As an exoplanet passes in front its host star, its atmosphere, if it has one, is illuminated. Its gases change the color of the starlight that reaches the Webb telescope. By analyzing these changing wavelengths, scientists can infer the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

While inspecting K2-18b, Dr. Madhusudhan and his colleagues discovered it had many of the molecules they had predicted a Hycean planet would possess. In 2023, they reported they had also detected faint hints of another molecule, and one of huge potential importance: dimethyl sulfide, which is made of sulfur, carbon, and hydrogen.

On Earth, the only known source of dimethyl sulfide is life. In the ocean, for instance, certain forms of algae produce the compound, which wafts into the air and adds to the sea’s distinctive odor. Long before the Webb telescope was launched, astrobiologists had wondered whether dimethyl sulfide might serve as a sign of life on other planets.

Last year, Dr. Madhusudhan and his colleagues got a second chance to look for dimethyl sulfide. As K2-18b orbited in front of its star, they used a different instrument on the Webb telescope to analyze the starlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere. This time they saw an even stronger signal of dimethyl sulfide, along with a similar molecule called dimethyl disulfide.

“It is a shock to the system,” Dr. Madhusudhan said. “We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal.”

No matter how the scientists revisited their readings, the signal stayed strong. They concluded that K2-18b may in fact harbor a tremendous supply of dimethyl sulfide in its atmosphere, thousands of times higher than the level found on Earth. This would suggest that its Hycean seas are brimming with life.

Other researchers emphasized that much research remained to be done. One question yet to be resolved is whether K2-18b is in fact a habitable, Hycean world as Dr. Madhusudhan’s team claims.

In a paper posted online Sunday, Dr. Glein and his colleagues argued that K2-18b could instead be a massive hunk of rock with a magma ocean and a thick, scorching hydrogen atmosphere — hardly conducive to life as we know it.

Scientists will also need to run laboratory experiments to make sense of the new study — to recreate the possible conditions on sub-Neptunes, for instance, to see whether dimethyl sulfide behaves there as it does on Earth.

“It’s important to remember that we’re just starting to understand the nature of these exotic worlds,” said Matthew Nixon, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the new study.

Researchers want to wait to see what the Webb telescope finds as it continues to examine K2-18b; provocative early findings sometimes fade in the light of additional data. NASA has been designing and building more powerful space telescopes that will look specifically for signs of habitability on planets orbiting other stars, including K2-18b. Even if it takes years to decipher what’s happening on K2-18b, it could be worth it, scientists said.

“I’m not screaming, ‘aliens!’” said Nikole Lewis, an exoplanetary scientist at Cornell University. “But I always reserve my right to scream ‘aliens!’”

But Joshua Krissansen-Totton, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington, said he worried that American astrobiologists may not be able to follow up on the latest results on K2-18b.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut NASA’s science budget in half, eliminating future space telescope and other astrobiology projects. If that happens, Dr. Krissansen-Totton said, “the search for life elsewhere would basically stop.”

Carl Zimmer covers news about science for The Times and writes the Origins column“

Trump Tariffs Could Raise iPhone Prices, But Affordable Options Remain - The New York Times

Why a Tariff-Inflated $2,000 iPhone Is Nothing to Fear

"Even if gadget prices surge, we have plenty of cheaper options, like buying last year’s phone model instead of the latest and greatest.

April 15, 2025Updated 11:47 a.m. ET

Sisi Yu

By Brian X. Chen

Brian X. Chen is The Times’s lead consumer technology writer and the author of Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use.

On Friday, amid a tariff-induced frenzy that drove hordes of consumers to panic-buy iPhones, President Trump announced a tariff exemption on electronics like smartphones and computers. For a moment, widespread anxiety about a potential $2,000 iPhone dissipated.

But two days later, the Trump administration said smartphones and computers were likely to be hit with new tariffs targeting semiconductors, or chips. More expensive iPhones could come after all! Talk about whiplash.

Don’t panic. Even if tariffs did cause the iPhone’s price to surge, we would have plenty of cheaper options, like buying last year’s phone model instead of the latest and greatest.

The most important lesson we can learn from the turmoil: The only consistent way to save money on tech is to use devices for as long as possible, which requires maintaining them as you would a car, and upgrading only when you must.

“Buy the best and drive it into the ground,” said Ramit Sethi, a personal finance expert. “Holding that item for longer will bring down the overall cost of ownership.”

There remains lots of uncertainty around future costs of tech hardware in general. Nintendo this month canceled plans to start taking orders for its game console, the $450 Nintendo Switch 2, to evaluate the impact of tariffs on pricing and availability. Costs of some accessories, like phone chargers, power bricks and cases, have already risen on Amazon.

Here’s how to navigate tech purchases going forward.

Hold On to Devices Longer to Save Money

The best way to save money on tech is, simply, to replace your devices less often.

To understand how personal tech impacts your finances, calculate the true cost of ownership, Mr. Sethi said. Each time we buy a new phone, we end up buying more than that. Extras like a protective case, additional data storage to hold more photos and apps, and an accessory such as a power charger or earbuds add up.

Take the iPhone 16 as an example. Its $800 price tag can easily inflate to $1,080, since you may also buy:

• An iPhone case for $50

• AirPods for $130

• 256 gigabytes of storage for $100

Your total cost of ownership over three years would be about $30 a month. You could then trade in your phone to offset the cost of a new one, but those savings would again be shaved away by the next phone case and other extras.

In contrast, if you bought the phone, along with those extras, and held on to it for six years, the total cost of ownership would shrink to $15 a month.

The same principle applies to other devices like computers and tablets: The longer you hold on to your belongings, the more value you squeeze out of them.

Maintain Your Tech Just as You Would a Car

Tech products were built to be high-value, long-term investments, similar to cars. Many modern smartphones, tablets and computers were designed to last six to 10 years. But most of us still buy new phones every three years, according to research by Chetan Sharma, a consultant for phone carriers.

One common habit is largely to blame: We neglect to replace the battery, said Kyle Wiens, the chief executive of iFixit, a company that provides instructions and parts for repairing electronics.

Similar to car tires, phone batteries degrade and must be replaced after a certain amount of use, roughly every three years. An aged battery directly affects the speed and longevity of the phone. But the process of prying open a smartphone to remove a glued-down battery can be intimidating, and buying a new phone feels easier than visiting a repair shop.

Now is as good a time as ever to make replacing batteries a new habit. In the last few years, Apple, Google and others significantly improved their smartphone designs to make batteries easier to replace.

I, for one, used a hair dryer and cheap hand tools to melt the glue around my iPhone 14 and pried it open to replace the battery in less than an hour. It cost only about $50.

Apple and many phone repair shops will also do battery replacements for about $100; Apple will replace an aged battery for free for iPhones under warranty.

Repair costs are also expected to shoot up because most tech parts, like batteries and screens, come from China, according to three repair shops I interviewed. But even if a $100 battery becomes a $150 battery, that will be much cheaper than replacing an entire device, Mr. Wiens said.

Buy a Used Phone

Recent tech panic buying was driven in part by estimates from analysts speculating that tariffs could drive up the cost of some iPhone models to anywhere from $1,300 to $2,300. Apple declined to comment on whether tariffs would affect its iPhone pricing.

But even in the worst-case scenario, we would have plenty of cheaper options, just as we do when shopping for cars.

Car shoppers are well aware that they never have to buy the most recent model. They can look for used options or buy a previous year’s model for much cheaper. About 76 percent of cars sold in the United States are used, according to data published by Consumer Affairs. Only 5 percent of phones are purchased in refurbished condition, meaning the products were used before being restored to like-new condition, according to research by Back Market, a site that sells refurbished tech gear.

Lauren Benton, a general manager at Back Market, said concern over tariffs appeared to be driving consumers toward older phones. Sales of a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro, which was released in 2023 for $1,000, were up significantly last week on the site, she said. The refurbished phone is selling for $639 and has a better camera than the latest $800 iPhone 16.

Even if tariffs drive new phone prices up, the value of your older phone will go up, too, and trading it in would substantially offset costs, Ms. Benton said.

This is all to say don’t fear the hypothetical $2,000 iPhone.

And let’s be frank: If you’re worried about your personal finances in the current chaotic state of the economy, you should probably be thinking about more important issues than phone upgrades, like your emergency savings fund, Mr. Sethi said.

“These discussions remind me of someone seeing their entire house on fire, and what they are doing is calmly changing their shoelaces,” he said. “Panic buying an iPhone is number 662 on the list of things I would be doing.”

Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer for The Times. He reviews products and writes Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use."

Trump Tariffs Could Raise iPhone Prices, But Affordable Options Remain - The New York Times