UK, EU regulators probe Google and Meta's 'Jedi Blue' ad deal

Google and Meta are facing scrutiny from UK and EU competition regulators over their infamous "Jedi Blue" ad-slinging deal. Jedi Blue is the name Google gave to an agreement with Facebook (now Meta) over bidding for ad space. Header bidding is where sellers can offer online ad space to multiple buyers at the same time. Sellers …

[Pascal Monett]

The pole

Tie both CEOs to it and flog them for fourty lashes.

Come back every month with the same treatment.

Let's see how long they last . . .

[Paul Herber]

Re: The pole

Thank you for your order for 40 lashes. You might like to know that we have a very special offer on at the moment for 41 lashes for the price of 40 lashes. What the deuce, lets make it 42!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame that neither company can completely sound like they aren't spewing the most parsed and picked-over statements imaginable. There are likely more untruths and half-truths than there are actual truths in what they said. And that's assuming there is actually ANY truth to what either mouthpiece said. But hey, if you're a hip, modern, Internet company, "truth" is an antiquated concept that could possibly cause you to rake in less profit, so it's best avoided if at all possible.

[Rich 2]

The way to deal with this (that should have been implanted decades ago) is simply to make the whole bidding for ad space thing illegal.

That would massively cut down on the spying these customers do on the public, halt huge amounts of data sharing, and generally improve the world.

[badflorist]

Or... simply more "Google's". Google == X

When all paths flow back to company X, X is the centralized distributor. X actively deteriorates X/2 but, promotes X + X. It's obvious what X is doing no matter where X is doing it. EU, US, UK... doesn't matter, it's always a X + X problem. I suspect that if you look at the politicians in any region, their bank accounts are following the same pattern. To fix this, someone/something has to develop a system where X becomes divisible. It looks like an easy problem to solve, but everyone becomes greedy then becomes part of the X + X problem.

If you find a few folk who have the means and are fine with _only_ making a few dozen million, then you'll have a shot at solving this cancer of a problem. Of course, after that we'll be onto a new problem but, at least this one will be behind us (this one has been dragging through the brush for far too long to still be "just part of the environment", it's time to clean the perimeter).

[cyberdemon]

"Google actively deteriorates Google/2 but promotes Google+Google"?

I think you should stick to flower arranging, mate. I have no idea wtf you just said.

[Anonymous Coward]

MORNINGTON CRESCENT!

[Richard Jones 1]

I Put My Efforts Into Avoiding Adverts

So, to be honest, I doubt that this impacted me. On normal web activity, I block adverts. As for mobile use, the damned adverts made web use too painfully useless. A recent mobile update tried to force every picture to be a video, and even polluted it with some god-awful noise. I deleted the crap, together with what might be the origin, an unwanted video and picture editing crap-app.

[Helstrom]

What Consumers?

"...and therefore restrict or distort competition in markets for online display advertising, to the detriment of publishers, and ultimately consumers."

Maybe it's just me but I've never thought of myself as a "consumer" of online ads. They're more something I need to put up with. Are there any actual ad consumers out there?

[Scott Broukell]

Re: What Consumers?

@Helstrom - I think perhaps that the word you are loking for may be: Victim, not so much "consumer".

[Richard Jones 1]

I Put My Efforts Into Avoiding Adverts

So, to be honest, I doubt that this impacted me. On normal web activity, I block adverts. As for mobile use, the damned adverts made web use too painfully useless. A recent mobile update tried to force every picture to be a video, and even polluted it with some god-awful noise. I deleted the crap, together with what might be the origin, an unwanted video and picture editing crap-app.

[Anonymous Coward]

iImportant?

> provide important online display advertising

"important"?? Oh come on!!