April 23, 2025  |  SIGN UP

Michael Bürgi
SENIOR EDITOR, MEDIA BUYING AND PLANNING

Google has dominated a lot of headlines lately -- and for many of the wrong reasons. Shortly after a judge sided with parts of the Department of Justice's case that Google's various interlinked businesses amount to a monopoly, comes the news that the tech giant is abandoning its abandonment of third-party cookies. 

My question is, does this latest news -- seemingly a response to the verdict against it, given the call to break up the company (I'm looking at you, Chrome) -- strike anyone as anything other than a response to that impending breakup? Even though many in the industry feel like they've been played and "millions have been wasted," the move is also perceived to be an attempt to get the DOJ to back off. 

In the end, perhaps the godfather of ad-tech himself, Brian O'Kelley, put it best in a LinkedIn post reacting to Google's about face: "What I love about all of this is that if you went to sleep five years ago and woke up today you would have missed nothing."

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