As a long time Googler (11 years!) and as someone who truly drank the Kool- Aid (big believer in being Googley!), it has been ... hard ... to read about Google's ad tech antitrust trial. To set the context quickly, I joined Google in 2010 on the buyside of the AdExchange. I eventually managed all the west coast buyers on AdX, working closely with The Trade Desk, Amazon, Yahoo, Tubemogul, Turn, and many others as they launched their DSPs. I left the AdX business in roughly 2016 and managed Google's platform partnerships with non-holding company agencies. I didn't go far, but it was far enough that I didn't personally experience all the "shenanigans" associated with header bidding, the real trigger for this anti-trust trial. I say all that because I don't have personal knowledge of what happened - I saw it happening like most of the rest of the industry.

The trial has been a remarkable parade of old colleagues and friends from the industry. Some of the best and brightest on both sides. That is what makes me most sad. My days on AdX were the most amazing of my career. The Googlers were sharp, motivated, creative, highly talented; the DSPs were the epitome of entrepreneurs and technologists - the best in advertising I still believe. There was innovation happening every day somewhere and all that progress was flowing to advertisers and publishers. Whole new sub-markets and industries were created, because we created the largest, the most sophisticated, the best marketplace in the world. It hurts to see that amazing work and progress colored by what came next.

I won't defend or prosecute my Google colleagues, as I wasn't at the table and I don't know what actually happened. But I do think that they lost sight of their mission. That business, particularly AdX and DFP, existed to make publishers money, connect advertisers to the inventory they wanted, and make it as efficient as possible. In the testimony, I saw people aggressively competing as you would expect of any company, but not always on the basis of this mission. It seemed to become more about defending the business than advancing it, protecting adjacent Google products rather than leveraging and enhancing them. I truly believe the real original sin was the inevitable decision to fold the business into AdSense (for the pub side) and AdWords (for the buy side). AdX and DFP/AdManager simply don't have their own product, eng, or sales teams any longer and haven't for 8-10 years. The DoubleClick leadership moved on to bigger and better things, seeding the rest of the industry and many other businesses within Google.

What might have been if the AdX and DFP business had been left as it's own thing with the amazing people and technology and drive to innovate? We'll never know, but we can remember those glorious years in the early 2010s when anything seemed possible!