[strongpigeon]

I agree with your take. Most likely they’ll be forced to divest from the Ads Exchange business which won’t affect them materially.

It would open up some possibilities for actors in that space to shift the balance of (pricing) power a bit, but I’m unsure the impact will be huge. All the big new advertising platforms tend to own their whole stack like you mentioned (Amazon, Apple) and for good reasons.

[frozenlettuce]

I believe that not controlling the exchange will affect them materially. Not because of the exchange's profits, but because of the data that it provides that lets Google optimize their campaigns (giving it an unfair advantage, as the competition has no access to this data).