Of Alphabets and Fitbits: Google ads and neo-competition

User data, user experience, and diminishing returns

‘My cup runneth over with data’ — Sundar Pichai (paraphrased)

In case you missed it, Big Tech CEOs from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google testified in front of Congress last week at an antitrust hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee. There’s been plenty of coverage about the hearing itself, including my own. Furthermore, I’ve already spilled-a-lot-of-ink about tech and antitrust over the years:

Apple’s Chinese Wall of Worry: App Store Impunity and Vertical Foreclosure

Collection: Tech and Antitrust

So, today, I want to discuss something a bit different…

In the Q&A portion of the hearing, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made a few comments about the diminishing returns-to-scale that incremental data collection yields unto Google’s ad revenue, which he was careful to distinguish from its user experience. The following exchange, in particular, was one…