DOJ victoriously claims the biggest scalp of all

There are moments in business history where the gears of the economy grind loudly and yesterday (April 17) was one of them.

In a long-awaited judgment, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) secured a win against Google for monopolising the open-web digital advertising market. The ruling confirms what many publishers, platforms, and policymakers had quietly suspected for years: that Google, through a series of acquisitions and auction controls, didn’t just participate in the market, it ran it.

On the face of it, this case is about the mechanics of digital ads. But scratch the surface and it becomes a story about control over pricing, access, and information. The result? An innovation ecosystem struggling to breathe—trapped beneath a monopolistic Pac-Man, gobbling up emerging threats and sealing the central core against future competition.

The court held that Google harmed publishers, competitors, and ultimately the public, by suffocating rivals and steering ad dollars into its own pockets.

What made the decision more than just a legal ruling was its tone as the judge echoed what many across tech and finance already know, and that is that when power is too centralised, creativity and capital flow to wherever it’s treated best.

What now?

1. How do you unwind a monopoly without creating a vacuum?
The challenge with monopolies is that they don’t just dominate, they become infrastructure. Untangling Google from the market it helped create will require a dose of uncommon inspiration, not a blunt instrument approach. Structural remedies, like breaking up parts of the ad tech stack, would create (temporary) chaos. But leaving things as they are risks locking out the next generation of platforms. For founders and investors, this is a live risk worth tracking.

2. Will challengers now rise, stir, or be swallowed earlier?
With regulatory winds shifting, some ad tech competitors may see fresh funding, talent, and customer interest. But if Google remains the gravity well, will the next wave of innovators get off the ground? Or will they be bought out, or boxed out before they reach scale?

3. Is this the starting gun for civil claims? The verdict creates legal ground for a wave of private lawsuits from publishers, platforms, and competitors. If just a fraction of the market steps forward, the liabilities could be material. For those who build marketplaces or rely on aggregators, the implications could easily extend beyond ads.

4. Does this embolden regulators in other jurisdictions, like here is Straya? In a world already drifting toward regulatory fragmentation, this win gives cover to other watchdogs especially in Europe and Asia. But it also introduces the risk of patchwork rules, where global players have to comply with clashing requirements. That’s costly and complicates international scale strategies.

5. Will Alphabet shift strategy or double down? Few firms have the war chest and legal sophistication of Alphabet. It could choose to retreat further into closed ecosystems like YouTube and Search, where it holds not just the data, but the content, the users, and the monetisation funnel. If it does, the defacto open web (Web2) which is already under strain could get weaker still.

Bigger picture innovation, fragmentation, and an IP open slather

Zooming out, this ruling comes at a time of growing international economic fragmentation, or deglobalisation, or better still re-regionalisation. The return of Trump-era tariffs and a renewed trade war are fraying the global digital fabric. As markets become increasingly walled gardens, the growing tension between national sovereignty and the global web will accelerate. These dynamics risk leaving innovative businesses, particularly startups, with fewer options to scale.

At the same time, voices like Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk are calling for the abolition of intellectual property rights. It’s a radical ‘burning man’ style idea gaining traction in certain circles, one that could unleash a wave of innovation that’s free from the shackles of IP. But it also raises the risk of new, equally powerful monopolies emerging in their place. Will we see the end of innovation’s greatest chastity belt, and if so, who will benefit the most?

Blockchain, as the digital backbone of Web3, presents a new frontier for decentralisation, and its certainly part of the debate, but it remains to be seen if this truly levels the playing field or creates another layer of complexity.

So, the question remains whether eliminating IP is truly pro-competition or whether it just shifts the monopoly to a new set of players, whether centralised and rules based, or decentralised by programmatic trust?

What the Google judgement might mean for innovators, corporate developers and capital allocators

This isn’t just a legal decision, it’s a market signal. Regulators, if left unruffled by the new administration, are rewriting the playbook for digital power.

Founders, particularly those in platform-based models, need to ask themselves many questions. Firstly, who controls my rails? Who owns my auction house? And what assumptions about market opportunity, growth, GTM and competition (SCA) should I make if Big Tech’s grip loosens?

For capital allocators, the message is clear. Due diligence needs to go deeper. It’s no longer just about ‘tech and team’ (and actually never really was, but that’s another story for another day) it’s about who controls the infrastructure. And with the rise of Web3, decentralised models may soon become not just a niche, but the norm and if that were to happen, and based on the power of network effects, it may be where the next trillions in GDP come from.

As blockchain-based technologies gain momentum, the competition for Big Tech’s dominance could be reshaped. Platforms, protocols, and marketplaces built on decentralised principles are already challenging traditional monopolies.

But the question for investors and innovators is whether and by when these decentralised models will scale to challenge the entrenched players? Or will they be absorbed, or outcompeted, by the giants of the past?

And that is most likely Meta’s megalomaniacal endgame, and yet another story for another day.

For the digital economy, the DOJ’s ruling isn’t just a legal victory, it’s a signal that the status quo can and will be challenged.

At Next Level Corporate, we’ll be watching. What happens next won’t just reshape search engines or ad platforms. It will determine who scales, who survives, and who gets funded in both the old and new digital economies, and which one (and version) will dominate and endure.

And in turn, the beginnings of a clear trend one way or the other will be highly instructive for innovators, Boards, corporate developers and capital allocators.

See you in the market.

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Web3 Barbarians at the Gate as Google stumbles and decentralisation stirs

DOJ victoriously claims the biggest scalp of all

What now?

Bigger picture innovation, fragmentation, and an IP open slather

What the Google judgement might mean for innovators, corporate developers and capital allocators