The US Supreme Court is poised to hear a case involving tech giant Google that could spell danger for the internet’s most lucrative business: online advertising.
The case, Gonzalez vs Google, comes up for hearing on Tuesday. It will decide whether or not internet companies are liable for the content their algorithms recommend to users. The tech industry argues that it has a legal protection in the US’s communications law.
Implications: The case may see the court determining if these companies are legally responsible for the hundreds of millions of comments, videos and other content posted by users every day. Such a decision could also strike at the heart of the automated advertising upon which Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google rely for the bulk of their revenue. Some view this case as an existential threat to social media companies.
A terror connection: Google is being sued by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old US citizen who was among at least 130 people killed in coordinated attacks by the Islamic State in Paris in November 2015. The family argues that Google’s YouTube should be held responsible for automated recommendations of Islamic State videos, reported Bloomberg.
Websites and ad networks automatically target ads based on information they have collected about users, including their location, browsing history, topics they follow closely and more. The ads are posted to websites by online tools without human intervention.
Experts say that a broad SC ruling could effectively snuff out the business of serving personalised ads on the internet, turning online advertising back to the early 1990s. Personalised ads are major revenue sources for internet companies.
Google and Facebook together capture almost 50% of all digital advertising revenues worldwide. They collect reams of data about their users in order to serve them relevant ads. Google made $168 billion in ad revenue in 2022 while Meta made $112 billion.
The case, Gonzalez vs Google, comes up for hearing on Tuesday. It will decide whether or not internet companies are liable for the content their algorithms recommend to users. The tech industry argues that it has a legal protection in the US’s communications law.
Implications: The case may see the court determining if these companies are legally responsible for the hundreds of millions of comments, videos and other content posted by users every day. Such a decision could also strike at the heart of the automated advertising upon which Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google rely for the bulk of their revenue. Some view this case as an existential threat to social media companies.
A terror connection: Google is being sued by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old US citizen who was among at least 130 people killed in coordinated attacks by the Islamic State in Paris in November 2015. The family argues that Google’s YouTube should be held responsible for automated recommendations of Islamic State videos, reported Bloomberg.
Websites and ad networks automatically target ads based on information they have collected about users, including their location, browsing history, topics they follow closely and more. The ads are posted to websites by online tools without human intervention.
Experts say that a broad SC ruling could effectively snuff out the business of serving personalised ads on the internet, turning online advertising back to the early 1990s. Personalised ads are major revenue sources for internet companies.
Google and Facebook together capture almost 50% of all digital advertising revenues worldwide. They collect reams of data about their users in order to serve them relevant ads. Google made $168 billion in ad revenue in 2022 while Meta made $112 billion.