Today’s Insights

• US rules that Google has a search monopoly

• Threads added 25M users in July

• Google is rolling out SEO recommendations

• PerplexityAI is planning to launch ads in September

• Reddit acquires ‘Memorable AI’

Feature

⚖️ A US federal judge ruled that Google has a monopoly on search

Legal proceedings were brought against Google for billion-dollar payments annually to Apple, Samsung, Mozilla, and others to be the pre-installed default search engine.

This week, a judge found that those payments obstruct other companies from being able to meaningfully compete with Google in search.

The penalties will be decided in a second hearing, which could take years according to one expert. Google will appeal.

The Winners

• Consumers are still likely to pick Google as their preferred search engine for now… but with the release of OpenAI’s search product, and other AI-first competitors such as PerplexityAI, the playing field could be more even for new search challengers.

The Losers

• Google will seemingly lose the agreements that it was prepared to pay tens of billions of dollars for…

• One of those is to Apple which will have $20bn less revenue each year.

• Apple, Meta, and Amazon have their own open anti-trust cases as the US seeks slow big tech… (including Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram & Whatsapp).

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Google & Meta

🛑 Meta plans to reduce reliance on Apple

Mark Zuckerberg says he’s focused on Meta’s future and plans to reduce its dependence on other companies. “I want us to build and have more control over the next set of platforms,” Zuckerberg said.

Bloomberg

🚫 Meta phases out celebrity AI chatbots

Despite launching less than a year ago, Meta’s AI chatbots featuring celebrities will no longer be available to users. Instead, Meta’s AI Studio will enable users to create their own custom Al chatbots.

The Verge

🚀 Threads reaches 200 million monthly active users

The app’s growth rate nearly tripled, adding 25 million users in the past month alone, up from 175 million in July.

Social Media Today

🔍 Google is rolling out SEO recommendations in Search Console

Google’s recommendations relate to indexing, crawling, and serving based on a website’s existing Search Console data. The feature will roll out gradually over the next few months.

Search Engine Land

🤖 Google adds three new AI features to Chrome

‘Google Lens’ lets users search on their desktop without leaving their tab, ‘Tab Compare’ to evaluate products across multiple sites, and a new history search feature where users can find previously visited pages using conversational queries.

Google

🔧 Google introduces new tools for Performance Max

The features include asset-level conversion reporting and advanced generative AI tools for image editing.

Google

More Headlines

💰 Reddit acquires ‘Memorable AI’ to boost advertising offering

Memorable AI enables advertisers to plan ad creative based on their branding and conversion goals via an AI-based co-pilot.

Reddit

📞 Reddit CEO calls on Microsoft to pay for data scraping

Steve Huffman claims Microsoft Bing, Anthropic, and PerplexityAI were scraping Reddit's data without authorization. “Any crawler that we don’t have a formal agreement with, we’re now blocking,” Huffman said.

Search Engine Land

📈 LinkedIn records revenue and engagement growth

LinkedIn's revenue increased by 10% and engagement reached new highs in the latest fiscal quarter, reflecting a 13% rise in sessions. The platform also noted a 34% year-over-year boost in video uploads. 

Microsoft

📢 Microsoft names OpenAI as a direct search competitor

The company listed OpenAI in its latest annual report, despite Microsoft’s $13 billion investment into the company.

CNBC

📺 Apple plans to introduce ads to Apple TV+ in the UK

Apple is in talks with the UK's Broadcaster's Audience Research Board over data collection for advertising performance tracking - as Apple plans to introduce a cheaper, ad-supported plan like rivals Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime.

The Telegraph

💸 Perplexity announces ad revenue share deal with publishers

Under its new “Perplexity Publishers’ Program,” the company will offer a "meaningful double-digit percentage" of ad earnings with publishers whose content is used by the search engine. This move comes amid controversy over alleged content scraping. Perplexity plans to launch its advertising platform by the end of September.

Engadget

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