Episode 75: Brave's JP Schmetz: ‘Publishers Need to Get Their Act Together'

Summary

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The Monopoly Report – Episode 75

Guest: JP Schmetz, Chief of Search & Ads at Brave
Host: Alan Chapell
Date: May 13, 2026
Episode Title: Brave’s JP Schmetz: ‘Publishers Need to Get Their Act Together’

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Overview

In this episode, Alan Chapell welcomes JP Schmetz, Chief of Search & Ads at Brave, for a wide-ranging and pointed conversation. The focus is on the realities of browser finances, competition in the search sector amidst DOJ scrutiny of Google, Brave’s strong anti-third-party tracking stance, and the true state of open web economics. Chapell and Schmetz debate the practicalities and ethics of ad blocking, publisher monetization strategies, and industry shifts as AI changes how and why we access the web. The episode explores disagreement over privacy, attribution, contextual advertising, and the meaning of “user agent” in a modern browser.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Role (and Reality) of Browsers as ‘User Agents’

• Browsers and Business Models:

  • Schmetz argues browsers must serve as true user agents for users, but economics force them to be more than that—they need viable revenue, which inevitably means search and ads.
  • Schmetz (06:11):

    “Firefox and Brave are probably the only ones who have as a primary goal to be in service of the user. The other ones always had a strategic interest that was not the user. Explorer and Chrome being the two big ones.”

• Evolving Incentives:

  • Chapell notes the tension: as browsers grow, keeping the lights on leads to difficult compromises and an inevitable need to serve multiple stakeholders.

2. Economics of Browsers: Search & Survival

• Why Search is Central:

  • Schmetz (09:27):

    “A browser without a search engine makes no sense. … The only way to financially sustain a browser at scale is via search advertising.”

  • Search ads offer rare efficiency: intent is clear, privacy is less at risk, and there's a big monetization upside with relatively few user clicks.

• On DOJ Remedies and Google’s Leverage Over Browsers:

  • The DOJ case’s remedies against Google missed the main points—distribution and monetization. Chrome’s integration and Google's payment for browser default search slots lock-out real competition.
  • Schmetz (12:13):

    “The problem was that … if Google could not pay for default, then [Apple] would’ve lost $500 billion in market cap … it would also have bankrupted Firefox, which is not a great thing, and … paradoxically … [Google] would have ended up being massively richer.”

3. Brave’s (Non)Hostility to Ads: Origin and Principles

• Not Anti-Ad, Anti-Tracking:

  • Brave blocks third-party ads/scripts on principle, not because it opposes ads, but due to the privacy risks of user data being surveilled by unknown intermediaries.
  • Schmetz (13:48):

    “We actually do not block normally first-party ads, but we have a strong bias or a strong allergy, I would call it almost, to third party stuff.”

• Blocking Nuance & Publisher Responsibilities:

  • Third-party scripts, even for purely contextual ads, are blocked if they originate outside the first party’s domain, because these can collect data about the user’s activity.
  • Schmetz (18:11):

    “Just get your act together. You have to like sell your own ads. Why do you need to rely on Meta or Facebook to spy all everyone in the world in order for you to make a buck?”

4. User Preferences, Ad Blocking & Publisher Economics

• User Opt-Out Patterns:

  • About 20% of Brave users effectively block all ads (often with multiple blockers); but even the default Brave experience shields users from third-party served ads, so publishers relying on ad tech intermediaries lose out.
  • Schmetz (16:23):

    “So users can opt out of ads and a small percentage of them do that mostly on the browser ad side. On search ads, people do not tend to opt out of ads because they tend to be very relevant and we don’t have that many.”

• The Tension with Publishers:

  • Chapell notes that Brave, by blocking third party (even non-tracking) ads, is making a normative judgment on behalf of users and at the publishers’ commercial expense.
  • Chapell (25:08):

    “You’re not necessarily just working for the user. You’re sort of working for the user on the backs of the publisher.”

• Schmetz counters:

  • The real social contract is with the user, not the publisher or the advertiser; “agency” means putting user interest first—even if it disrupts publisher business models.
  • Schmetz (25:08):

    “No one realizes that there are hundreds of companies behind that page that are gaining information about you… whenever we explain it to people, they always want to block it.”

5. Circumvention and Cat-and-Mouse Dynamics

• Publishers & Ad Tech Rout Around Controls:
  • Ad tech intermediaries aggressively look for ways to bypass browser-based blocking, but Schmetz says big tech publishers (e.g., YouTube) are most aggressively fighting back.
  • Schmetz (23:53):

    “That’s the user agent. Like, you cannot expect the browser to work for the publisher only … the more you breach privacy of the user, the more people are going to go to solutions like Brave.”

6. Contextual vs. Behavioral & The Attribution Debate

• Lack of Distinction in Blocking:

  • Brave does not distinguish between innocuous third-party contextual ads and those that use cross-site tracking—all third-party requests are blocked.
  • Schmetz (27:18):

    “If you do a contextual ad, why do you need a third party for that?”

• Chapell’s Pushback:

  • Measurement and attribution for advertisers isn’t just about tracking—sometimes delivery alone is essential for business needs.
  • Schmetz argues first-party solutions suffice for practical attribution and measurement for most cases, especially in search; publishers just want the cheapest, easiest solution, which usually means relying on third-party tech.

7. Privacy by Default & User Understanding

• Brave’s Strict Defaults:

  • GPC (Global Privacy Control) is enabled by default on Brave, reflecting their users’ core privacy expectations, not just legal compliance.
  • Schmetz (30:05):

    “Why would we ship a product that’s turned off by default? That wouldn’t make sense.”

• Understanding of First/Third Party Distinction:

  • Chapell questions whether users really understand the implications of these technical distinctions.
  • Schmetz counters that no matter the technical understanding, people default to “no” when made aware of what’s happening behind the scenes.

8. Search Defaults, Revenue Shares, and Power Concentration

• Brave Does Not Receive Payments from Google or DuckDuckGo for Referrals:
  • If a user sets Google as their default search in Brave, Brave receives nothing; Google only pays browsers who don’t attempt to compete in search.
  • Schmetz (33:34):

    “If you run a browser, Google is very happy to finance you as long as you don’t try to make your own search engine. But the day you start to make your own search engine, you’re not going to get any money from Google…”

9. Remedies for Google’s Search Monopoly: Data Sharing is a Red Herring

• Against Data Sharing as a Remedy:

  • Schmetz and Brave submitted amicus briefs warning that court-mandated search data sharing would risk user privacy and be unfair to those who built independent search engines—the real issue is lack of distribution and monetization options.
  • Schmetz (35:29):

    “For privacy reason, we are against it. And for competitive reasons, we are against it because we’ve done the work for 18 years in my personal case to build an independent search index.”

• Data Sharing Creates ‘Fake’ Search Engines:

  • Schmetz sees mandated sharing as potentially creating a slew of Google-clones, not real competitors—remedies should focus on breaking Google’s hold on distribution/monetization.

10. The Future Web: Search, Distribution, and AI

• AI Agents and Distribution:

  • Future web usage will mix human and AI agent access—distribution will still matter and could even intensify lock-in unless decentralization gains traction.
  • Schmetz (41:15):

    “AI … is going to become a mix between humans accessing content mostly for entertainment, and agents accessing the same content, but also obviously more productive content to solve some issues on behalf of the users.”

• Is Ad-Based the Only Model?

  • Schmetz foresees an evolving model where subscription takes a more central role, “with advertising on top,” not the other way around.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On publishers outsourcing ad sales:

  • Schmetz (18:11):

    “Just get your act together. … In print, [publishers] sell their own ads … It’s just pure laziness of relying on Google and Meta to sell the ads that has created this basically nuclear waste of data all over the world and requires massive regulation, which don’t seem to really work, to sort of contain it.”

• On why data sharing remedies miss the mark:

  • Schmetz (35:29):

    “We’ve done the work for 18 years in my personal case to build an independent search index. And that was not our biggest problem. The biggest problem is that Google basically monopolized monetization and distribution. That’s where we want to see remedies.”

• Chapell challenges Brave’s approach:

  • Chapell (25:08):

    “You’re sort of working for the user on the backs of the publisher.”

• Schmetz’s defense of user primacy:

  • Schmetz (25:08):

    “That’s not an expectation that is reasonable. Yet this is what’s happening online.”

• On the likely outcome of Google antitrust trials:

  • Chapell (38:23):

    “Google is brilliant at a lot of things, but one of them … is that they’re fantastic at running everybody around in circles towards some purported goal and then finding new ways to thwart things, the thing that everybody’s trying to get.”

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Important Timestamps

• [04:26] – What is a browser’s role (now and historically)?
• [06:11] – User agent: “who does the browser really serve?”
• [09:27] – Browser business model realities; why search/ads are unavoidable
• [12:13] – Why DOJ remedies may have missed the mark
• [13:48] – Brave’s anti-tracking stance—and why it’s not anti-ads
• [15:10] – What is blocked/allowed: third-party, contextual, or first-party ads?
• [16:23] – User ad blocking patterns; percentages that opt out
• [18:11] – “Publishers need to get their act together”
• [21:33] – Ad tech’s efforts to circumvent browser-level blocking
• [23:53] – Cat-and-mouse: browsers, publishers, ad tech, and user agency
• [27:18] – The contextual vs. behavioral ad debate
• [30:05] – Global Privacy Control defaults and user expectations
• [33:34] – Search referral revenue: Brave’s exclusion from Google’s payments
• [35:29] – Why Brave opposes mandated search data sharing
• [41:15] – Future web distribution in the age of AI
• [45:24] – Shifting models: subscription vs. ad-funded web and AI
• [48:44] – Chapell’s closing thoughts: browser-level ad blocking transfers value from publishers

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Conclusion & Key Takeaways

• Browsers, especially privacy-focused ones like Brave, are locked in a perpetual battle to monetize while keeping faith with their users’ privacy expectations.
• Brave is unapologetic in blocking all third-party scripts—including those necessary for ad delivery and measurement—regardless of context.
• JP Schmetz believes publishers should reclaim direct ad sales and stop outsourcing to Big Tech intermediaries, a stance Alan Chapell challenges as ignoring publisher autonomy and business realities.
• Brave opposes mandated sharing of Google search data as a competitive remedy, arguing it creates privacy risks and dampens real innovation. Monetization and distribution leverage, not raw data access, is the root of Google’s dominance.
• The future of the web will be shaped by AI agents as much as by human users, but the tension between open and closed ecosystems—and between user and publisher interests—will remain at the center.

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Transcript

[A]

This is adtech God and I command you to listen to this house ad. So if you're listening to this show, just know that you've really stumbled upon a giant network of content across advertising, marketing, media, publishing, and of course the people that work in this great advertising industry. So go to market. Check out all of our brands. We have multitude of shows from the Brand Forum, the Advertising Forum, the Monopoly Report, the Ad Tech God Pod, the Market, and more. We are bringing more podcasts to our network. We are consistently and constantly bringing on new shows. So check it out. Market or search for any of those brands in the app that you use to listen to this podcast. Enjoy the show and see you all soon.

[B]

Welcome to the Monopoly Report, where I look at the impact of privacy, antitrust and other regulations on the global advertising economy today with JP Schmetz of the Brave Browser. I'm Alan Chappelle. I'm outside counsel and fractional CPO to a bunch of tech companies and am the principal analyst at the Chappelle Regulatory Insider, which is a monthly report that shares strategies and insights for digital media worldwide. You can find a link to a sample copy of the Chappelle Regulatory Insider in the show. Notes I want to give a big shout out to everyone heading down to DC for the NAI summit on May 13th and 14th. I'll be given the morning keynote on Thursday, May 14th, so if you're in the DC area, I hope to see you there this week. My guest is Jean Paul Schmetz. JP is board observer and Chief of Search and Ads at Brave. He's been building tech companies since 1995. JP founded Clicks in 2008 as a European alternative to the US search incumbents. Clicks acquired Ghostery in 2017 and Clicks Search technology eventually became Brave Search when Brave acquired Clicksi's search assets in 2021. Brave today claims somewhere north of 100 billion monthly active users, its own search index, its own ad products, and an API that, if you didn't already know, quietly powers a meaningful slice of the AI search market, including the default web tool Inside Anthropics. Claude I've written a bunch about the browser market on the Monopoly Report newsletter as well as the Chappelle Regulatory Insider. And of course I've had representatives from both DuckDuckGo and Firefox here on the pod. So we'll start off discussing competition. JP and I start with thoughts on Judge Mehta's remedies on why he believes the DOJ left the most important pieces distribution and monetization that they left them essentially untouched. And why he is not losing sleep over the prospect of Google being forced to share search data with competitors. His view, which I'll let him explain in his own words, is that data sharing is the wrong remedy aimed at the wrong person problem. But the more interesting tension in this episode isn't Brave versus Google. Rather, it's Brave versus publishers and Brave versus the ad techs. You'll hear me push back. You'll hear JP push back harder. We'll disagree on whether contextual advertising can really be done effectively without third party measurement. We disagree on whether users actually understand the first party third party distinction the way Brave assumes they do. We also get into search economics, GPC defaults, and what the open web looks like five years from now. If the current pace of AI investment holds, or if it doesn't, this will be a good one. So let's get to it. Hey jp, thanks for coming on the pod. How are you?

[C]

I'm very good. Yourself?

[B]

I'm doing great. And where is my audience finding you today?

[C]

I am in Munich or the south of Munich in Germany today.

[B]

Ah, fantastic. At home. Yes, I love it. How is Munich this time of year?

[C]

Oh, it's beautiful. Spring is coming, summer is coming slowly. Weather is beautiful, all green and blue.

[B]

Yeah, this is just a wonderful time of year. I'm here in New York and this is probably my favorite time is May.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

So you have spent decades in publishing, in ad tech. So when you look at the browser market today, do you still believe that a browser can function as a true user agent? Or has the economic reality of running a browser at scale, you know, just fundamentally compromised that construct?

[C]

Well, I don't think so. I think that the real question that we have to ask ourselves is what is the role of the open Web in the future? Right. And I think it's clear that everyone wants to have one. It's possible that some big tech companies try to make it smaller and try to create wall gardens here and there, but they seem to be always a cycle of going back to the open web. And if you have an open web, then you need a browser because that's the machine that gives you access to the open web. And if you have an open web and a browser, you're going to have a search engine because it's hard to find things on the open web. It's not a. It's not a small place. So yes, and definitely the browser has to act as a user agent. We'll talk about privacy today for sure. AI is Very important to have a user agent as well or user agent of agent. So I'm not sure it will be called in the future, but no, no, there is definitely a place for the open web and therefore there is a place for the browser.

[B]

Right. But what I was trying to get at is because I don't think anybody would disagree that there needs to be a browser and maybe that changes over time, maybe we eventually get closer to the voice initiated thing that Amazon and others have created. But I think my question is more what's the role of the browser? Because traditionally, and you go back 10, 15 years, the role of the browser was to serve the interests of the user. And so I'm still asking, is like that still a thing or is that partially a thing?

[C]

Is that true? You know, what happened before is that, I mean, of course you had Netscape and yes, it was definitely the first browser was trying to serve the interest of the user. But I remind you that when Microsoft started the Explorer, its main goal was to defend Windows. And then when Google started Chrome, its main goal was to defend Google Search. So there are browsers and Firefox and Brave are probably the only ones who have as a primary goal to be in service of the user. The other ones always had a strategic interest that was not the user. Explorer and Chrome being the two big ones.

[B]

So I would agree with that. But as somebody who over the years has, has wandered into a like a W3C or standards body discussion, I feel like the, that historically browsers have beaten us over the head with is, oh no, we're just here to serve the user. Now to your point, that's probably less true of, of some than others. But I was just sort of curious like if you're, you know, are, are you guys sort of recognizing maybe now that there's enough, you guys got to keep the lights on, Mozilla's got to keep the lights on. And so that there's sort of additional interests or at least a cost to the tools and the services that you're providing.

[C]

There is no question that a browser needs to make money to be viable, right? Especially at the levels of hundreds of millions of users that we all sort of play in. And traditionally browsers have been, do not have a business model of their own. Right. So that started with Netscape where the server was supposed to pay for the browser and then it was Microsoft and then Windows was supposed to be paying for the browser and Firefox quickly got a search deal. Chrome. So we never had a browser that made money out of the browser itself, that's for sure. And I don't expect that that will change, except for some possibilities like Brave Origin, which we just launched, make you. Yeah, you can pay for the browser, right? But do we expect that any super meaningful percentage of users will pay for their browser? That's very unlikely to happen. So browsers are forced to refinance by another mean. And the best mean, and I would also venture to say the only mean to refinance a browser is via search. Now, most of our competitors have decided to use Google to do that, which brings in a whole lot of problems with it, including a major case with the DOJ for monopolistic abuse. We didn't take that route. So we have our own search engine. And we'll discuss that, I'm sure in detail later. You know, the bottom line is that browsers need money and that money will come from search, mostly.

[B]

And to build on that, I mean, I. I'm going back to your recent interview with Ad Exchanger and you went as far as to say a browser without a search engine and search ads just doesn't make any sense. And so I'd love it if you'd walk us through some of the economics of that. Why is it in your view that even if Chrome were to force to operate independently, it would go bankrupt within 10 minutes? I think that's one of the things you said.

[C]

Yes. So first statement is a browser without a search engine makes no sense. You can't ask people to type in or to know every URL's of the web. Right. So I think it makes sense that a browser needing a search engine is a little bit like a car needing a steering wheel, right? Yes, it's necessary. A search engine has the. This really wonderful feature is that people basically tell you what they want. That's the purpose of a search engine. And in about 18% of the cases, this what they want can only be resolved by having some kind of transaction in the end. In 82%, that's not the case. It can be fulfilled by watching a video or finding a nice piece of text that just gives you the answer that you're looking for. But in 18%, very often if you're looking for a very, I don't know, like some kind of parts to fix your dishwasher, you're not going to be satisfied by just having a text describing the part. You will want to get the part. And it turns out that search advertising is perfect for that. It doesn't require any breaches in privacy because the query is the only information that you need and it has an extremely high click through rate, extremely high value for the advertiser and therefore allows you to basically finance a browser with relatively few clicks a year. You would be surprised how few. So that's the other thing. Now the statement about Google or Chrome going bankrupt if it was separated from Google, that is actually anchoring itself in the remedy that the DOJ demanded that basically Chrome should not have a search deal from Google. So a Google Chrome without a search dean from Google would be a money pit.

[B]

There are a whole bunch of added features actually in addition to search that I think Google is able to leverage via Chrome. And I think that's one of the reasons why the doj was asking for a Chrome divestiture. For better or worse, His Honor decided not to go in that direction. And I think we're going to be paying the price for that for the next decade.

[C]

I have to be careful with my word there. But the DOJ did not necessarily present a case that compiled. I think that the fact that today basically Google is able to continue to pay for defaults. I mean, I'm sorry, right. Whether or not you got the Chrome diversity or not, but if Google is still able to basically say Apple will give you billions to not compete. I think we haven't reached much in this case.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I think it's debatable. And who's to blame here whether it's the doj, Although you know, I think

[C]

they didn't ask for it.

[B]

Well, they did ask for Chrome's divestiture though.

[C]

No, yes, but they didn't ask for. They didn't go as far as saying that Google could not pay any more for defaults. Yeah, they did say it, but in the practice of how it was formulated it was like, okay, that's fine because we don't want to hurt too many people. By the way, it's a complex case. I don't want to make it sound like it would have been easy because the problem was that if the judge or the DOJ and the judge had basically come to the conclusion that Google could not pay for default, then he would have to stop paying Apple, which would have survived and lost 500 billion in market cap, most likely. But it would also have bankrupted Firefox, which is not a great thing, and Google paradoxically would have probably the 500 billion market cap that went away from Apple would have gone to Google because the users would not have stopped using Google. And so that would have Been ironic in a sense that the company supposed to be punished would end up being massively richer than companies that in effect did not do anything wrong.

[B]

I would love it if you would walk me through the arc of Brave kind of launching in 2016 until today. I mean you, you've, you've introduced search ads, you have a new tab takeover display, notif push notification ads. Like I'm curious to understand, you know, you started from a place where it seemed like you were, I don't want to say hostile to advertising but, but seemed wary of it and, and it seems now that, that perhaps you're less so.

[C]

No, I don't think that's, that's completely true. But I have to correct a little bit the historical hack a little bit. So the. I was in 2016, although I was a good friend of Brendan Eich when he founded Brave, I was still working at a company and I, that I founded called Clicks that was building a search engine and a completely independent search engine. And in 2021 we came together. So, so at that, this is the time where Brave got the opportunity of basically acquiring us and having a fully independent search engine. And search ads came, I want to say 2022 or 2023, but the real growth in search ads was 2425. The browser ads, or what we call browser ads, which are new tab takeovers, push ads, et cetera, were there before and yeah, there was necessary way to finance the browser. Now Brave was not necessarily anti ads. I think that's the way users simplify anti tracking. We actually do not block normally first party ads, but we have a strong bias or a strong allergy, I would call it almost to third party stuff. Right. Third party simply means that the user is not aware that one or dozens of companies are basically looking over their shoulder while they are reading some contents and some of them are pushing ads and we tend to block all of these requests.

[B]

So are you just blocking third party tracking ads? Are you blocking third party delivered contextual ads or you. I mean, I guess my question is

[C]

are you able to draw those distinctions basically third party? Like for example, if you go to Google Search in Brave, you, you will see the ads. We don't block them because they come from google.com and they don't come from, I don't know what else. Right, right.

[B]

I guess my question though is if you, you go visit say the New York Times and, and a percentage of their ads are, are purely contextual, but they may be served by a third party ad server, those are still being Blocked?

[C]

Yes, yes. If they were coming from New York Times, they would not be blocked.

[B]

So you guys have grown pretty significantly even over the last year or so. The numbers I have is, you know, 80 million monthly active users in January of 2025, 109 million in February 2026. And so I'm curious, what degree have you guys seen user pushback against, you know, some of Brave's monetization layers? And then what does that tell you and really my audience about, you know, your user base's tolerance for. And I'm using air quotes. Good ads versus what the industry has historically served.

[C]

So, so users can, can opt out of ads and a small percentage of them do that mostly on the browser ad side. On search ads, people do not tend to opt out of ads because they tend to be very relevant and we don't have that many. Some people turn on a more aggressive blocking mode which then also block first party ads or they install another ad blocker on top like grocery or UBlock, etc. So some people like to be double protected. And I think all in all that is that sums up to probably around 20% of our users.

[B]

Got it.

[C]

Again, it's unclear whether it's just about ads, but basically these are people where we can't serve ads for sure.

[B]

Right. And so for that 20% you're saying that Brave also can't serve ads. So I. Let's focus on the 80% where brave is allowed to serve as but a percentage of those users. You're blocking just about any third party script and not making a distinction between a tracking script necessarily and a just an ad serving script.

[C]

Yes, because by definition a third party is learning that you are on this site and therefore is able to create a profile of you.

[B]

Well, so that's why. But, but you're not. All of them do.

[C]

Yes, but we can, you know, if we would have to trust them, that would be the. That would be an interesting day.

[B]

Got it, got it. Okay, and so what's your comment? So I guess what's your response to, to the idea that. Okay, well I'm the New York Times and a percentage of ads are being blocked and so, you know, is that a derivative use of the publisher inventory? Does it, you know, ultimately do you guys see this morphing into a license situation or.

[C]

Let me take my 30 year publisher hat and what I would tell my teams is like, just get your act together. You have to like sell your own ads. Why do you need to rely on Meta or Facebook to spy all everyone in the world in order for you to make a buck. Like, I mean, the New York Times in the, in the, in print sells their own ads. Alberta, where I worked for many, many years, we have a history of selling our own ads. It's just a pure laziness of relying on Google and Meta to sell the ads that has created this basically nuclear waste of data all over the world and requires massive regulation, which don't seem to really work, to sort of contain it. Right. There is no reason for a big company like the New York Times or Berta or whatever to have to rely on that. These systems, they can sell their own ads. They can do the hard work just like Brave sells their own ads. We don't rely on programmatic even for owners, right?

[B]

Well, they certainly can. They choose not to. And they choose not to because they've presumably made a business decision that they want to operate that way. And yes, mostly, you know, if I'm a visitor to the New York Times, my loyalty would be to the New York Times. And if the New York Times makes that decision, I will decide to, I don't know, go to the Washington Post. I mean, that's has its own set of challenges.

[C]

But like, no, you know what tends to happen. And if you look at it from the European perspective, about 30 to 40% of people block ads. Right. Regardless of whether they do it with Brave or with something else. And you take the decision that the convenience of working with big tech for ads is higher than the loss that you generate with these ad blocking things. I guess, but I know because I was there when these decisions were taken. It's just pure convenience. Like it's much easier to plug in some JavaScript on your site. And there was a phase before GDPR in Europe where people would have hundreds of these scripts. Like every business development manager would drop a script on the, on the page just because it might make a buck. Right. Not realizing because most of these people are not technical. Like I am not realize what that meant. Server side, basically mass surveillance just to sell a few ads. Come on. Right? Is that really like users have. And you were talking about user agent before. That's exactly what it means, right? The users have the agency to say, well, no, you're not doing good ads or you're doing too much of it. I use an ad blocker. They can always pause the ad blocking on your side, right? They don't, but they can.

[B]

Okay. No, I understand. So I guess I want to jump away from the metas and Googles of the world and more into kind of the ad tech intermediaries who aren't that, who aren't necessarily part of the big tech. And so one of the recurring themes here on the Monopoly report is that a lot of ad tech vendors have been pretty creative in routing around browser level controls. And so from Brave's vantage point inside the browser, what circumvention techniques are you seeing in 2026 that the broader industry might not be talking about enough? And what's your current approach to addressing some of those circumventions?

[C]

I mean, I don't know if they're becoming. I think if you look over, I don't know, last 15 years or so in tracker blocking and ad blocking, the only thing that you realize. I was in a deposition yesterday where I was surprised that I was asked that in 2016, Ghost 3 was blocking 2,000 trackers. Right. And I thought. And they thought, that's a lot of trackers. I said, yeah, you should see today. Right. So. So in, in 10 years, we've gone from a few thousand sort of block list type to many millions. So the problem, if anything, is getting worse from the user perspective. The circumvention techniques are. It's actually quite easy to circumvent, just go first party, right. Which you can make in a way a bit fake by proxying the traffic, but you will lose some information which will at least bring some privacy to the user. I think the more aggressive sites regarding circumventions are actually the big tech people for sure.

[B]

How so?

[C]

I mean, just take YouTube for example, which is probably the site that most people would go aggressive on in terms of ad blocking. And they are the ones that are the most aggressive in trying to circumvent it.

[B]

Wait, I'm not sure. How is YouTube trying to circumvent?

[C]

Basically, if you use an ad blocker, they will try for you to not be able to watch the video or to have to log in or something.

[B]

But isn't that the right of a publisher to be able to say that, you know, if I, if, if I can't monetize.

[C]

Yeah, so no, I'm not saying it's not there. Right. It's just because you were asking if you've seen a more aggressive circumvention, then definitely yes. And more from big tech than from other players for sure.

[B]

So I, I guess where I'm trying to square the circle is it strikes me that Brave is effectively circumventing what the publisher is trying to do in terms of monetizing the user and so an ad techs are effectively trying to circumvent what the browsers are trying to do. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth but, but I think what I'm hearing is that there's that. That you sort of arrived at, well, all's fair in love and war. That a certain amount of that is just sort of to be expected.

[C]

Yes, of course. Because that's the user agent. Like you cannot expect the browser to work for the publisher only. Right. And this is what had become for a while. So the idea of having a user agent means that I'm going to render the open web the way my user wants it to be rendered. And if the publishers figure out that users are, I don't know, blocking ads too aggressively like, because I don't know, I mean there's not that many pop ups anymore. I don't know if you've noticed because browsers have basically stopped pop ups. But there was a time where publishers thought that having a pop up was a great way to advertise. Right. And so I think this is a market kind of thing, which means that the more you breach privacy of the user, the more people are going to go to solutions like Brave. And the only reaction is not to say Brave is bad. The only reaction is to say, well, let's maybe do a little bit less tracking. Right. You know, it's a market things, there are forces. You cannot expect the browser to work for the advertiser. That just, that's not reasonable.

[B]

Right. But I just want to acknowledge that you're not necessarily just working for the user. You're sort of working for the user on the backs of the publisher.

[C]

Yeah, but yes and no. I think that it's not part of the deal. Like the user has a mental model that is that if I look at a website, it is kind of like a page in a magazine or is something that is one unit. We've done many, many, many, many interviews over the years and we. And no one realizes that there are hundreds of companies behind that page that are gaining information about you while you're going to that page. And whenever we explain it to people, they always want to block it. They say, no, I'm not, I didn't sign in for that. It would be a little bit like you would somehow accept or find it acceptable and that if you go to the supermarket that there would be five people running after you looking at everything you are looking at and communicating between them so that they can retarget you in another shop down the road. That's not an expectation that is reasonable. Yet this is what's happening online.

[B]

I would push back on the idea that it. Whether it's reasonable or not. And I also think that there's a degree and that's sort of where I get to, where I think things go a little off the rails for me is you guys aren't necessarily distinguishing a contextual ad from a meta or a Google Ad.

[C]

Yeah, but if you do a contextual ad, why do you need a third party for that?

[B]

Well, you need to measure, you need to conduct some form of attribution as best one can. I mean those are legit advertiser goals.

[C]

No, you are telling me we doing search advertising contextually and we measure and we don't have a search party it's possible to do without.

[B]

But that's search ads. That's not necessarily contextual.

[C]

Is the same.

[B]

Yeah, that, that's where I, I think I, I might respectfully disagree. I think no context.

[C]

What does contextual mean? Contextual means that the only input you use for the targeting is the text of the article which belongs to you because you just said that this is a publisher, they publish a page and therefore it's a page about that and all skis. Then you will have an ad about skis. This is, by the way, the model of advertising work since about 1850. Right. Like this is not new. Contextual advertising is the model of advertising. Right?

[B]

Right.

[C]

It can be contextual.

[B]

By now there's been for the last 25 years or so at least some pushed for the advertiser to understand how, you know, to measure how effective the ad is. And so I guess, Mike, I understand the we don't want, our users don't want to be followed around the Internet. But, but I do think that that probably oversimplifies a lot of the activities that, that I don't know that users would have a problem with.

[C]

So I can tell you that for attribution. So basically to measure how good the ad is performing, I don't see that much problem because again, we are selling search ads which then lead to a conversion, etc. Which is perfectly measurable by Brave. And it's not measurable if you use UBlock. Right. I'm talking about Brave. Brave does not break attribution as long as you do it correctly, which is doing it first party, like every big E commerce site has learned to do over the last few years. Even Google recommends it to every SA360 customers and every Google Analytics customers because they understand that if you do not do it that way, there's going to be a certain percentage, depending on the country, between 20 and 40% of things you won't be able to measure and it will falsify all your data. So there is no excuse to say, yes, I would like to do contextual ads, but I will contract it with the worst company in the world for data privacy meta, because they're going to give me the ad because I don't have a salesforce and I want to do it on the cheap. Sorry, then you're going to like, you bring in other people, we bring in other people. And that's what you said. It's a good war then, right?

[B]

No, no, fair enough.

[C]

But you can step out as a publisher and as an advertiser, you can perfectly do advertising for Brave users that will not get blocked.

[B]

Right. Provided that you do everything first party, which is not entirely practical for everyone. And there's a big difference between display ads and search ads because in the display ads there's things like you want to know, has this created a lift for you? Has this. So it isn't all just about clicks is all I'm saying. So I, I want to shift because it doesn't sound like we're going to agree on this and that's okay. You, you guys enable the global privacy control by default and there, there's a couple of different state privacy laws, Colorado, Connecticut, I think even California, that, that have language that require that opt out preference signals not be turned on by default or not be used to disadvantage other processors along the way. And so I'd love for you to share with my audience how Brave is squaring its default on GPC implementation with some of those requirements.

[C]

So I'm not a lawyer, I'm a techie, so we operate globally so you cannot believe how many regulations are out there.

[B]

Oh, it's a great career for privacy pros, my friend.

[C]

No, no, I'm sure they have their workout cut out for them. I think we start from the user which is that basically users who download Brave and that applies to other privacy tool like Ghostrio, let's say UBlock, etc. Download it for the purpose of exactly that, which is to enforce a level of privacy which has nothing to do with law or not law, it has to do with a certain expectation of how the world should work for them, which is in effect as defined by Brave, blocking third party stuff. So, and by this I mean in a human sort of interpretation is I don't want requests emanating from my browsers that do not go to the page that I've chose to visit. Right. So. So if I go to cnn, I want. CNN can do whatever they want, but Meta should not be involved and Google should not be involved and other companies that I don't know should not be involved. That's the expectation of privacy of Brave users. But that also applies to most other privacy tools. And then that's normal that we turn that on by default. Why would we ship a product that's turned off by default? That wouldn't make sense. So I don't think it's about very specific legislation in one state or the other. It's about the fact that all users expect to have a first party world.

[B]

Well, I think that's debatable because I think the definition of a first party world, I think is we've already kind of gone back and forth on that. But what's sort of interesting to me.

[C]

No, sorry, it's a technical term. Right. If a website loads anything from the domain CNN.com, that's going to be first party. If there's another domain that pops up, it's a third party. That's just a technical definition. I don't want to. You know, it could very well be that something goes to CNN and then CNN sends it to, I don't know, something else. Fine, that's still first party technically. But there is no contest as to what first party means or not mean. That's a technical.

[B]

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is I think it's a debatable point whether users fully understand the concept and the implications of first party versus third party.

[C]

But then, I mean, sorry, I can say the same thing. Like, do they fully understand what the publisher is doing by firing 72 requests? When you go to aarp.com are you talking about like aarp.com so people who are maybe a bit older and less tech savvy, etc. And then you have, I don't know, 50 plus trackers on there. Why? Right, so. So we live in a world where, yes, people have difficulties to understand what's going on behind the scenes and we give them an alternative. That's why we have a brand and people trust us, et cetera.

[B]

No fair. I think, I think I understand where you're coming from. I wanted to shift to search ads just for a minute. So you guys offer choice, you've got your own search engine process, but somebody can go to DuckDuckGo or Google or through the browser.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

If I turn on, we'll just say Google as the default search engine on the Brave browser. You guys are getting a cut of the. No. So you're not, you're not touching that at all. No. That's really important to know because that's that you guys are putting your money where your mouth is there.

[C]

Well, yes, and not only by choice I would say because that's one of the fine points of the DOJ case against Google or the monopolistic case against Google. So if you run a browser, Google is very happy to finance you as long as you don't try to make your own search engine. But the day you start to make your own search engine, you're not going to get any money from Google and you're not going to. And we don't get any money from DuckDuckGo and we don't get any money from anyone. But you know, most people use either Brave Search or Google obviously. Right. There's very little or there's almost no reason for someone to choose Bing or Doggo in Brave. It doesn't make that much sense. But I would say that about half of our search, the search traffic that emanates from Brave goes to Brave Search and half that's in the US Globally it's a bit more Google because we don't support all languages. But yeah. So a lot of queries go to Google and Google makes probably a million or so a month in revenue from us and don't share anything back. It's very good that we speak about it because this is one of the finer point of the anti competitive behavior of Google is that if you don't compete against them, they'll be very, very happily will finance your browser. If you do even make a little competition, they will cut that off. We never had it right. But they will certainly not give you any revenue share.

[B]

Well, on a related note or you guys must be thinking about in the context of some of the DOJ remedies in the search case, some of the data sharing arrangements. I would love it if you had a position or some thoughts about where, where all that's going because it strikes me that Google is relying on privacy as a mechanism to deny data to competitors. And do you guys think there's a path there or are you sort of, have you sort of thrown up your hands and said, you know, this is just never going to happen?

[C]

No, we, we've actually published a, an amicus brief to the, to the courts. So that's a public document where we expressed that we were basically against or we were basically asking the court to put some restrictions on the data sharing. We've also told the DMA in Europe, which has some new projects about data sharing, to reconsider because their proposal was a massive privacy problem. People have forgotten that one day AOL decided to share some data with the world and it was only for 15 minutes and destroyed probably eight people's lives. Because it's not fun when your search queries become public, even though it was supposed to not happen that way. So for privacy reason, we are against it. And for competitive reasons, we are against it because we've done the work for 18 years in my personal case to build an independent search index. And that was not our biggest problem. The biggest problem is that Google basically monopolized monetization and distribution. That's where we want to see remedies. Because we have a search engine, we make a lot of money with it in Brave. And because AI companies use our browser. I don't know if you know, but OpenClaw, for example, uses Brave search API by default.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So these big open systems are using the alternative search engine. And if you were to force Google to give all this basically to give a search engine for free to anyone who wants to have one, we do not think it would create alternative search engine. It will create a bunch of fake search engines which are really Google in the back, and then the remedy will expire in five or 10 years, whatever they really get in the end. And then they will still only be Google. So let's not fight where the problem is. Not which is. Is it difficult to build a search engine? Yes, it is. But. But it is possible and we've proven it to where it is really a problem. Like, for example, if you have a browser that has its own search engine, then Google doesn't give you money, for example. Right. Because it likes it. And Apple cannot work with Brave Search. I mean, I would love it if Apple would promote Brave Search and get a revenue share from us, but they can't because Google won't let them.

[B]

Because that's interesting. Yeah.

[C]

You know, so, so, so we don't think that these data sharing arrangements are basically flawed because they will expose data that should never be exposed. And frankly, we don't think, we don't understand why it should penalize people who have done the competitive work for 18 years to benefit those who do not have any intention of doing it. There's still appeals and there's still a technical committee. There's Still a lot of. I don't hold my breath for any data sharing happening anytime soon.

[B]

Just to tell you I get your point and I think I even agree with it. I would just say I don't think you have a lot to worry about because I think this is going to be an exercise where over the next five or seven years that Google is going to. Google is brilliant at a lot of things, but one of them, at least around my neck of the woods, is that they're fantastic at running everybody around in circles towards some purported goal and then finding new ways to thwart things, the thing that everybody's trying to get.

[C]

And so like they have been in these processes worldwide. I mean us is not the first country to do this, so they've been exercising that for, for a while and they will find a way out. But, but I want to just to repeat, the problem is not so much on the data, the problem really is on the distribution and monetization which unfortunately have not been addressed. Y that's, that's the main problem.

[B]

I think that the DOJ put a lot of their effort, or money as it were, capital into getting Brave away from Google and when that didn't materialize, I think the effectiveness of everything, by the way, including the ad tech remedies, which may or may not come down

[C]

soon, that's a whole different, different thing.

[B]

Agreed, but, but without an independent Chrome browser, a lot of this other stuff, I think, I don't want to say it doesn't matter, but it certainly reduces the impact.

[C]

Yeah, I think that the distribution argument is basically that is that Google uses money to basically monopolize what it doesn't own, like Safari, et cetera, and has a fully integrated vertical integration. So they sell ads, they have ad systems, they have search, they have browsers, they have AI, they have everything. Right. And unfortunately, I don't think it's reasonable to believe that the future will be more decentralized in that specific aspect. It will be more decentralized in other aspects, but in this sort of corporate aspect. And yes, there are new competitors with Anthropic and OpenAI et cetera, but they will have to vertically integrate with other stuff as well in order to compete against Google, because it's very difficult to imagine that you can get your AI from Entropic, your browser from Brave. Yes, maybe, but unfortunately unlikely. And this is not something I find great, but that's just probably what it's going to be.

[B]

Well, how do you think the Internet shapes out? I'm going to give you Two paths. One is an Internet where Google continues to own distribution, which seems to be the path we're currently on, unless there's some speed bump within the European Union coming that I am unaware of. And then the other path is one where, where Google doesn't own the distribution or the gateway to the Internet. How do those two Internets look differently?

[C]

I think the wrench that's going to change quite a few things is obviously AI, because the web is going to become a mix between humans accessing content mostly for entertainment, and agents accessing the same content, but also obviously more productive content to solve some issues on behalf of the users. Right. So it's perfectly reasonable that web pages in the future, so if you, let's say, own a restaurant or you have a hairdressing salon or something, your web page is going to be both from human and machines because someone may ask an agent, hey, can you book me an appointment at this hairdresser for next Tuesday? Right. And then there's a bit of back and forth and then that thing gets done. I need a good restaurant in London for next week, blah, blah, blah. If the investment level continues that we currently see from, I want to say five or six companies in AI and they compete to death and hopefully no one dies, then you will have a distributed access to the web and to whatever is behind it, and Google will then lose some importance, but they will still be one of the five and they will be most likely a very, very important one. Oh yeah, I don't see them being crippled by any legal case or legislation or anything like that. They can only get crippled because the users decide that they would rather use a different product. But then most likely they will still use cloud on Android, which is going to be a problem for cloud because it's on Android and Google has some ways of trying to get Gemini in there somewhere.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[C]

So that's where the next fight will be. But at the moment there's still a potential for redistribution and hopefully we don't end up in a, in a winner takes all situation where everyone has given up. You know, I, I was around when Google Search was built and it was really astounding how little competition they had. Yeah, because, because they emerge. You know, you probably remember the, the, you know, 2000, where, where basically everything went down. Right. Like everything went to zero.

[B]

Oh. I graduated from law school in December of 2000, just as the Internet 1.0 had burned to the ground. It was a great time, lots of fun.

[C]

I was already developing websites that would go from Billions worth to minus millions worth. And, and what happened is that, is that essentially if you look at the depth of the like the worst moment of them all was somewhere around like October 2022. That was basically where website did not have any advertising, there was no advertising left, everything was gone. And yet Google was just at that moment building one of the most expensive product of all time with zero competition because no one could find capital. And they were attracting advertisers with a brain dead business model which is you put $1 in and we give you one and a half back. Right. Because it was a transaction immediately. Like there was no, oh, I have to wait six months and then I see some money. And so they basically grew in a period of chronic underinvestment. Now you cannot say this for today, right, unless we have another bubble burst at one point. But at the moment it's still quite an amazing situation that you have such a new technology combined with massive level of investment by companies who look like they know what they're doing. Now if there's a bubble burst and the capital goes down like it did at that time, obviously not all of them will survive. But maybe it doesn't burst, right? Or maybe they are doing something that actually they generate infinitely more revenue than any company pre 2000. So I think there's a good chance that they all stay relatively healthy. And then definitely there's a potential for redistribution of, of traffic, redistribution of monetization, et cetera, et cetera. And it looks like it's a model that is not primarily advertising finance, which is, I think very healthy.

[B]

Well, we'll see. I mean, you know, OpenAI is talking, you know, 20, 30, 100 billion in ads. I think that's a made up number.

[C]

Yeah, of course that is a made up number. For sure there will be a part that should be advertising based, namely anything that has to do with intention should be advertising based because it's just stupid to do it any other way. But it is healthy that there are subscription model around. Yeah, I think just think of Netflix for example. I think the growth of streaming would have been massively different if it had been financed only via advertising.

[B]

Yes, I would agree.

[C]

Right. It would have been not good for the user and not good for anyone, I would argue. And the fact that some of Netflix is now advertising finance is okay. So, so I'm, I'm hopeful that the model will be, you know, more subscription driven at the beginning and then advertising on top rather than advertising and then try desperately to find a few subscription on top like unfortunately, the web model has been.

[B]

I agree with you. I think that the hidden thing in there where, where I'm still trying to get my head around is what does all this cost and to what degree is it currently being subsidized so that when not only the real cost emerges because the market is no longer interested in subsidizing this, but the, the final cost, which might be, you know, 1, 1.3, maybe even 1.5, whatever the actual cost is, you know, how does all of that play out with all of this AI? And I'm still trying to get my head around that.

[C]

It doesn't have to be a like, at the moment we're still in the development mode where every model brings about massive increase in potential and massive increase in training costs. But that is going to run a certain time and then at one point you will not have the growth in cost and nor the growth in output. And I expect these companies to become ultra profitable at that moment. Because the moment you start to burn maybe models into silicon instead of having general purpose silicon that allows you to run any model model at any time in any form, the cost is going to dramatically drop. And if they still have a business model based on subscription, then these things will be profitable. Although I expect them to be already profitable up to a certain point by the unit economics. But because they have to invest so much.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

In order to compete, then we have a bit of a distorted sort of view of these companies because the cost of today is basically an investment for the future, which may or may not happen, but you know, it's still an investment. And you compare that with the revenue of today, which is basically the revenue of the previous model. Right, right. So if you were to compare the revenue of today with the cost of yesterday and the cost of today with the revenue of tomorrow, maybe it works. Obviously no one knows. Right. Because no one knows what the revenue of tomorrow is. But I find it healthy that these companies invest because if they wouldn't, then Google wins everything again.

[B]

Yeah, that's funny. It's a great point to keep in mind here because the last thing, a lot of it, I think a good chunk of my audience wants is five years from now, Google still to be not just the undisputed champ, but the only one standing.

[C]

Yeah. Then you have to root for people who effectively compete and especially those that put a lot of money behind the competition. So up to obviously companies like anthropic, etc. But also companies like Brave who have invested years and years into doing the right thing. Like really building the thing and not just pretending and then actually trying to make a living out of it. So if you, because if you root for failure of the. Or you being a skeptic or you say I don't think it's going to work, all of these things, you're basically rooting for the incumbent to stay exactly where they are. They don't innovate as much as the others. Don't fool. I mean, Google invented AI for all practical purposes, or this new way of doing AI was invented by Google, but they certainly did not invest enough to make it, to make it shine and they're still quite reluctant at it. Right, so we launch at Brave. We launch AI, what they call AI overviews. We launched them a year and a half before them. We have chat experience within the search engine. I encourage you to use search.brave.com and put two question marks at the end of the query and see what happens. And you will find out that this is. This is there. There are higher levels of performance possible.

[B]

Well, this has just been a great discussion. I'm going to leave it at that. Jp, I really appreciate you coming on. I know we don't agree on everything, but I really love your willingness to come on and maybe debate a little bit, because that's exactly what I think my audience often needs to hear.

[C]

Anytime.

[B]

Thanks so much, jp. Take care. That was Jean Paul Schmitz of Brave, and as you heard, JP and I don't view ad blocking the same way. That said, I'm grateful to be able to have these types of discussions with people who see things differently from me, and there's certainly a few points of disagreement here, but in many respects the place I land when it comes to Brave is similar to how I've landed with respect to DuckDuckGo and Mozilla. There's certainly a segment of the population that values their privacy to a high degree and they really appreciate what brave, Mozilla and DuckDuckGo have to offer. Having had all three of them on the pod, I applaud that they're offering an alternative to the Apples and the Googles of the world, even if I don't always appreciate the specifics around how they offer those alternatives, I want to leave you with a few themes. First, on Google and the DOJ remedies, JP and I are mostly in agreement here, and I think his framing is the right one. The Google DOJ search case was always going to live or die on two questions, distribution and monetization. I thought that the Chrome divestiture was the cleanest path to addressing both at once, but for whatever reason, judgemeta declined to require Google to divest Chrome. Everything downstream of that decision, and in particular the data sharing debates, is, in my view, secondary. JP is right that the data sharing solves the wrong problem, although I would push back on the idea that the data sharing necessarily creates a new privacy problem. The AOL search log incident from 2006 that JP cited was a long time ago, and there are ways to mitigate the possibility of reidentification or other privacy issues occurring today in connection with the sharing of search data. I'd invite you to review the recent report from the Knight Georgetown Institute that goes into some detail on how sharing could work in a way that seemed privacy safe. I'll post a copy of the KGI report in the show notes Second, on the economics of the browser itself, JP's point, I agree that monetization has become an increasingly thorny challenge for browsers. Brave and DuckDuckGo offer the rare exception in that they are able to help fund themselves via their own search engines and ad programs. The reality is that browsers today are forced to be more than simply user agents, they are also serving advertisers, and there's a tension there that I don't think most browsers are willing to admit exists. Third, and this is where JP and I part ways, I am not persuaded that the third party first party distinction as Brave applies it tells the whole story regarding what's happening on a publisher page. JP's position is that any third party request the user didn't explicitly invite is by default suspect. My position is that there is a meaningful difference between a tracking pixel that builds a cross site behavioral profile and a third party AB server that delivers a contextual creative and counts an impression. We can debate the merits of cross site tracking, but Brave doesn't even draw that line. They block both. And when JP says the answer for publishers is and I'm using air quotes, get their act together and sell their own ads first party the way, you know, Brave does. In other words, Brave doesn't like website and ad tech privacy practices and therefore feels justified in taking ad revenue from those publishers, that position ignores the fact that publishers are independent businesses and it's simply not Brave or any other browser's place to make this type of decision unilaterally. And this isn't just my opinion. Jason Kint at Digital Contact Next has argued for years that browser level default blocking Braves but also Safaris and Firefoxes quietly transfers value away from publishers without anyone compensating them for it. JP didn't really engage with my critiques here. I wish he had. You can agree with Brave or not, I don't on at least a few points, and I told JP so. But the conversation we just had is the very conversation our industry should be having more of, and the type of discussion I'll try to foster here on the Monopoly Report going forward. This wraps up today's episode. I want to thank you all for listening. Please subscribe to the show on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And thanks for listening.

[C]

Some Follow the Noise Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at bloomberg. Com.