google – mackaycartoons

Thursday March 2, 2023

March 2, 2023 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 2, 2023

Google is stealing from Canadian newspapers and advertisers

June 26, 2019

For 15 years, we’ve all been hearing a fake story about why newspapers around the world are dying. It goes like this — the internet killed the news, with old, slothful media companies being unwilling to adapt to new technology. The closer you look, the less sense this story makes. There are plenty of new media companies, everyone from the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed, digitally native firms with deep pockets and clever managers, who can generate huge amounts of web traffic, but aren’t able to sell the advertising to monetize it. And there is still advertising, lots of it. It’s just that the money for those ads isn’t going to the newspapers on whose sites they sit.

The real story of why newspapers are suffering can be found in an action in January by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, when the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, along with eight U.S. states, filed a suit to break up Google’s advertising business. According to American enforcers, the search giant has unlawfully engaged in “monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products,” basically the software plumbing underneath most online advertising, and thus, the revenue that newspapers rely on. Google inflated its profits, redirecting advertising revenues from newspapers to itself.

June 12, 2019

It’s a complex story, but at the heart of it is what looks like theft. Most of us think of Google as a search engine, and it is. But Google has many other lines of business. This particular suit involves display ads on the open web, which are what you find on the Wall Street Journal or ESPN. These ads are bought and sold in an unusual manner. If a user goes to the site of a newspaper, unbeknownst to the consumer, a highly complex financial market kicks into gear. Newspapers no longer sell most of their advertising directly but have become integrated into a giant set of global auctions. In these auctions, advertisers bid for the right to place their ad not into a specific newspaper, but in front of a specific user. Money then changes hands, from the buyer of the ad to the publisher, with a set of middlemen each taking a cut. This happens in a split second, billions of times a day. At this point, online advertising is far bigger than the stock market in terms of the number of transactions.

Well, guess who runs the software to manage this financial market? Google. And guess who takes the lion’s share of the revenue? Google.

March 21, 2018

There’s a decade-plus-long backstory to this scheme. In the mid-2000s, Google transitioned from its role as a search engine into the main intermediary of all online advertising. In 2005, Google had a lot of advertisers that were buying its search ads. It also started to let smaller websites put strips of ads up and gave them a share of the revenue. Ad industry insiders at the time realized that advertising was transitioning from a Mad Men-style set of local, regional and national markets to an automated set of marketplaces.

Google’s strategy wasn’t to remain a search engine, but to expand and control all online advertising. But the firm had a problem. It couldn’t break into the market for the space on big established publisher sites, because that market was already controlled by another near-monopolist, DoubleClick. DoubleClick had 60 per cent market share in the software used by publishers to manage how they sell ads on their site, or what’s known as an ad server. So, Google’s then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, did what every good monopolist does when in a lax policy regime: he bought his rival — DoubleClick — in 2007. (Continued: The National Post)

Map Maniac

September 30, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

When I was a kid, long before I knew the names of any Prime Minister of Canada, or any President of the United States, I drew maps. I loved them then, and I still love them to this day. I’d grab the latest map inserted in the family’s National Geographic and try to squish the name of every town and lake into every traced replica. I’d draw stars in for the capital cities and adjust the font size of my hand writing to match the apparent size of each village or city. For the longest time I thought each map was my training towards becoming a professional cartographer.

And then, I was told I had to stop failing Math.

Swag for sale!

Fast forward a few decades and into my 12th year as a hired editorial cartoonist I finally got to live my childhood fantasy of getting paid to be a cartographer. From November 2009 to May of 2011 I was assigned on a free lance basis to draw maps for a series of features regarding the communities and areas which make up Toronto. Every Thursday, the Toronto edition of Metro would include this in their newspaper available for free throughout the city and aimed at the commuting readers.

Some of the areas were familiar to me as I had spent a few years in the 1990’s living as resident of the College Street Little Italy area. Other areas were and continue to be a mystery place for me. Thanks to Google Street view, I was able to visit each area from the comforts of my own home office here in Hamilton without ever having to see for myself the progress of particular condo developments I was assigned to pinpoint. Because the Google Street view mobiles had only just made their trek through Toronto a few months prior, I was able to identify the condos which were in the process of being built by the huge signs that go months in advance of big construction projects.

The series ran its course in 2011 after covering many different areas of Toronto. Douglas Dunlop, the editor in charge of the series Spaces and Places has put together a nice website which chronicles all the issues we put out.

Today, I’ll be stepping out of my regular gig as editorial cartoonist to draw a similar kind of map for the Hamilton Spectator. This time I get to showcase some of the development boom happening in my own city’s downtown. Look for it to to be featured in the next few days to come.

Downtown Development Map 2013

Key to the map:

1) Mustard Seed Co-op, 460 York Blvd.
2) Metrolinx GO Station
3) Witton Lofts, 50 Murray St.
4) BMO plaza, 275 James St. N. (between Colborne and Barton Streets)
5) Acclamation Lofts, 185 James St. N. (proposed)
6) The Seedworks Urban Offices, 126 Catherine St. N.
7) Costa’s Wine Country, 162 Ferguson Ave. N.
8) Tan Thanh Asian grocery store, Park and Cannon Streets
9) Offices, 123 James St. N.
10) Tivoli Theatre condos, James St. N. (at Vine St.)
11) Empire Times condos, 41 King William St. (at Hughson)
12) Jackson Square, 100 King St. W.
13) King Street West Apartments, 275 King St. W. (at Hess)
14) ORA restaurant, 18 Hess St. S.
15) Bella Towers (150 Main Street West) and Homewood Suites at 40 Bay Street South (Vrancor)
16) Main West Apartment building, 137-149 Main St. W. (proposed)
17) McMaster Health Campus/Family Health Centre, Main and Bay Streets.
18) Gore Park Heritage buildings, 18-28 King St, E. (proposed)
19) Treble Hall Restoration, 21 John St. N.
20) City live/work space, 95 King St. E.
21) Royal Connaught, King St. E. (proposed)
22) Royal Court Offices, 19-21 John St. S. (proposed)
23) Hamilton Grand, 64 Main St. E. (at John Street) (proposed)
24) Townhouses, 152-154 Catherine Street South (near Young Street project)
25) City Square, 85 Robinson St. (also borders Charlton Ave.)

October 2, 2006

October 2, 2006 by Graeme MacKay

	Delegates	Googled with the word ‘egghead’	Googled with the word ‘question-able’	Googled with the word ‘baggage’	Googled with the word ‘boring’	Googled with the word ‘Trudeau’	Googled with the word ‘muffin’
Michael Ignatieff	1,252	2,070	20,300	20,000	19,800	49,200	1,540
Bob Rae	832	1,690	16,000	15,700	12,300	50,600	266
Gerard Kennedy	706	199	641	747	710	17,000	117
Stephane Dion	698	179	850	630	546	48,800	141
Ken Dryden	194	204	873	9,100	9,860	34,900	389
Joe Volpe	193	104	61,700	10,600	796	21,800	543
Scott Brison	163	166	10,600	868	806	33,800	107
M. Hall Findlay	41	33	241	1,100	730	836	22

Above is a tally of delegate votes for each candidate vying for the Liberal leadership alongside a comparison of candidate names googled with various words. The numbers show Ignatieff leads alongside the googled word ‘egghead’, ‘baggage’, ‘boring’, and ‘muffin’. Bob Rae wins next to ‘Trudeau’, and Joe Volpe comes on top next to the googled word ‘questionable’. More googled comparisons will follow in the weeks to come.