The Open Garden’s Watershed Moment: Reflecting on Google's April 2025 News
In the wake of a pivotal antitrust ruling and Google's cookie reversal, Aditude's CSO John Shankman explores what these seismic shifts mean for publishers, ad tech, and the future of the open web.
The future of the open web has often been presented as a slow dance with inevitability. But in the past few weeks, two major events collided to create a rare moment that may very well be remembered for its era-defining symbolism and being a real fork in the road for publishers, advertisers, and platforms alike.
First, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Google’s control over publisher ad servers (GAM) and its exchange (AdX) violated antitrust law. Almost immediately after, Google announced it would abandon its plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome.
Each event is significant on its own. Together, they mark a deeper shift: Google's role in the web’s ecosystem is quickly evolving.
From Indexing to Generation: Google's Strategic Evolution
Google’s original mission was clear: organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That goal shaped and popularized the web, helping users navigate a civilization’s worth of knowledge and culture through search.
Today, a new force is reshaping the internet: generation. Large language models, generative AI, and data automation are transforming how information is created, organized, and consumed. For Google, the future of the web is no longer just about discovering content—it’s about fueling it too.
Within this context, Google is evolving. Instead of being a gatekeeper to the web, it is becoming something deeper: a general-purpose tech and intelligence layer that powers from beneath, not above.
This shift is not a retreat. It's a natural development—one that opens space for the web to breathe and innovate again.
A Remarkable Moment for Publisher Monetization
The antitrust ruling loosens Google’s dominance over monetization infrastructure. The cookie decision, meanwhile, offers the ability for digital advertising to continue its evolution—but this time without the feeling that a single platform is rewriting the rules unilaterally.
It’s easy to frame these shifts as destabilizing. But digital publishing has long been about adaptation.
The early web favored SEO mastery.
The mobile era elevated app distribution strategies.
The programmatic era rewarded those who could navigate auctions and complexity.
The next chapter will see the greatest growth among those who structure their data intelligently and prioritize flexibility and experimentation. I remain optimistic that the wider availability of sophisticated technologies will continue to drive these capabilities for publishers, empowering them to monetize in ways that, until recently, only the internet’s largest tech companies—or, dare I say, websites like Amazon.com and Facebook.com—were able to achieve.
The Open Garden Will Thrive
Less concentrated platform power doesn’t have to mean collapse—it can mean opportunity.
New ad tech infrastructure, like the tools Aditude provides, allows publishers to own and manage their monetization strategies without depending on opaque black boxes or needing to reinvent the wheel. Control over code, delivery, and data isn’t just technical—it's a pre-requisite for redefining the status quo and emblematic of the new era.
The open garden doesn't have to mean chaos. It can mean diversity, resilience, and innovation.
And Google, even as it evolves, will still continue to support this ecosystem in its new role contributing to an emerging data and intelligence layer—or aquifer—beneath the open garden.
Looking Forward with Optimism
The internet, after all, was built for publishing—for connection, creativity, and innovation. Those fundamentals aren’t going anywhere.
This moment, challenging as it may seem, isn’t the end of the open web. It’s the beginning of a freer, smarter, more open era.
There is a new opportunity for quality content to thrive.
The next chapter of the web is already being written—by publishers, technologists, advertisers and everyone who believes that openness is strength, not weakness.
A new layer of the open garden has been activated, and its arrival marks an evolution that will likely shape the ecosystem for decades, if not generations, to come.
Ready to navigate this new era with confidence? Reach out to Aditude to discover how we’re helping publishers adapt, innovate, and thrive in the open garden. Contact us today.
