Google faces a landmark antitrust ruling, urging tech firms to shift focus from lock-in tactics to customer value.
Legal expert Michelle Fleming emphasizes focusing on customer experience as a guiding principle for compliance.
The decision foreshadows regulatory attention on AI, impacting future tech industry practices.
The Google monopoly ruling signals a priority shift, pushing tech companies to trade lock-in tactics for real customer value. Compliance is the catalyst, but experience is the endgame.
Michelle Fleming, Chief Legal Officer at Bell Techlogix, an IT managed services provider focused on client productivity, sees the decision as a cue for companies to rethink what it means to serve — and keep — their customers.
The North Star: “The ruling is an example of what happens when a company loses sight of customer experience as its North Star,” says Fleming. “If Google had focused on delivering value and choice for its customers, the compliance issues might have been avoided.” She points to a simple reality: “the customers are the ones who decide if we have a job or not.” For her, customer focus isn’t about audit trails, it’s about direction. “When you put the customer experience first, compliance tends to follow,” says Fleming.
Appeal ahead: Fleming agrees with the court’s monopoly call but doesn’t expect the fight to end here. “There’s definitely going to be an appeal.” At the core, it’s not just a legal issue. It’s about customer harm.
Google’s actions “reduced customers’ choices on other alternatives to the server and drove up costs,” she explains, calling out the impact on experience, pricing, and control. The court took issue with Google tying its ad exchange to its server and enforcing “unified pricing” that limited publisher flexibility.
Brace for impact: The ruling’s final outcome will hit users directly. If it holds, “customers are going to be the winners because they’ll have different alternatives,” says Fleming. “And then prices are also going to come down a bit.” But if Google succeeds on appeal, she warns of “fewer choices, higher cost,” and a drop in ad quality as publishers “lose the ability to improve the ad quality for the customers, but also to diversify their experience,” explains Fleming.
Lesson learned: Beyond the immediate fallout, Fleming sees a message for the broader tech industry. “Companies should start looking at where they’re making their investments and where they’re spending their dollars in digital advertising,” she says. Her advice is clear: “tech companies need to take a cue from this judgment,” especially when it comes to practices like product integration and tying.
AI on the radar: The Google ruling is more than an ad tech story; it’s a signal for how AI will be policed. Fleming notes the DOJ is “future-proofing” the decision with Google’s AI investments in mind, raising new questions. “Is there going to be the ability to sponsor AI search result summaries?” she questions.
Looking ahead, she contrasts the EU’s sweeping AI Act with the U.S.’s “state-by-state patchwork policies,” and flags disclosure as a key issue already emerging. “Deciding if you have to disclose whether or not you’re using AI will be a significant issue down the line,” says Fleming.
Cali compliance: “When I’m looking at it from a compliance perspective I take the most conservative, aggressive law, which is typically California,” says Fleming, “That way, if I implement compliance steps with California law, it’s generally going to cover me across the board.”
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