Google has its hands on nearly everything you do online: the websites you visit, the news you see, the ads you’re forced to watch, and all your valuable personal data. Now Google has another target in its sights — your TV — where you and your family likely spend at least a few hours a day.
Google has ramped up its efforts to dominate television with YouTube TV by replicating its monopolistic ad practices — practices that should be considered violations of antitrust laws.
YouTube TV has become synonymous with television for millions of Americans who subscribe to its streaming service, and its dominance is indisputable. In 2025, YouTube TV became the nation’s most popular TV streaming platform, controlling 13.4% of viewership and 10 million subscribers, according to Nielsen market data.
While Google does not break out YouTube TV’s financials, the media research firm MoffettNathanson predicted in 2024 that YouTube TV would generate $200 million in operating profit that year. That may pale in comparison to its streaming rivals’ offerings for now, but Google is already using its monopoly playbook to squeeze both cable providers and on-demand competitors like Netflix and Hulu.
When Google’s streaming TV platform launched in 2017, it debuted with programming from Disney, 21st Century Fox, CBS, and NBCUniversal.
Its proposition at the time seemed simple: it had the eyeballs, but networks had the content. YouTube’s user base has for years been dominated by Millennials and Gen Zers, demographics that carriers desired but were losing to widespread cord-cutting. By entering the streaming market, YouTube TV could apply the ad model it had already used to great success with user-generated content to a new library of long-form premium shows.
Those streaming agreements quickly deteriorated. By 2025, YouTube TV had increased its subscription costs fivefold and was raking in billions of dollars in advertising revenue, thanks to sophisticated ad-targeting technology that enabled it to promote content that kept users on its platform longer.
When it came time to renegotiate its licensing contracts, YouTube TV sought to gain even more market share. Rather than “integrating” content, which had prompted viewers to leave the app to access third-party programming, YouTube TV demanded the right to “ingest” content and make it streamable directly from its own platform.
YouTube TV’s network partners, who operated rival streaming apps, accused the company of using its market power to squash their services, even as it relied on their content. In 2025, carriage disputes erupted between YouTube TV and Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox Corp, Paramount, and Univision over these terms. YouTube TV reached “eleventh-hour agreements” with all but Univision and Disney, whose programming went dark on the platform in September and October that year after failing to meet YouTube TV’s new conditions. Disney executives alleged that Google and YouTube TV wanted to “use their power and extraordinary resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them build their service.” Univision argued that YouTube TV’s actions had stripped “millions of Hispanic viewers of the Spanish-language news, sports, and entertainment they rely on every day.”
In response, YouTube TV called its partners’ protests “unnecessarily aggressive and assertive” and framed its demands as a win for consumers seeking simpler ways to access streaming content. After weeks of negotiation, Disney, Universal, and Univision agreed to terms that restored their programming on YouTube TV’s platform, including a form of content ingestion.
This is a classic play from the Google playbook, which has built a multitrillion-dollar corporation on the idea of building a better mousetrap. What began as an index of the open web has evolved into the world’s most profitable advertising machine. Today, more than half of the company’s revenue comes from user data-driven search ad targeting. The arrangement allows businesses to surface their products on Google’s platforms but also funnels a mountain of consumer data back to Google, which then uses it to cannibalize page views in favor of its own properties.
As a result, Google now sits between those businesses and their traffic. In the same way that Google has robbed news sites of clicks through products like its AI Overviews feature, YouTube TV has absorbed television carrier audiences and ad revenue by bundling its content into its data-optimized platform. YouTube TV can now monetize its shows within Google Ads, the lucrative ecosystem through which its parent service, YouTube, generated $11.4 billion in revenue last year. It has also positioned itself as a competitor to carriers’ direct-to-consumer platforms, making it harder for these partners to grow their own streaming services.
Google’s monopolistic playbook has not gone unchallenged, however. In August 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta found that Google illegally monopolized online search by paying to have its search engine power browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The landmark case, which spanned nearly five years, determined that Google’s search engine accounted for 90% of web queries, a foothold it gained through these exclusive contracts.
The Department of Justice filed a notice this year that it will appeal antitrust remedies ordered by Judge Mehta, suggesting it may revisit a proposal to force Google to sell off properties such as its Chrome browser or end its browser deal with Apple.
Google was hit with another major antitrust ruling last April when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found that it had violated the law “by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” over parts of the digital ad market. Brinkema noted that a series of acquisitions Google had made over the past 15 years allowed it to control the levers for buying, selling, and displaying online ads. The European Union followed suit and fined Google $3.5 billion for similar anti-competitive practices.
These rulings, combined with Google’s ongoing attempts to devour the television industry, should serve as a call to action for lawmakers to scrutinize the company’s latest target. Already, YouTube TV has leveraged its strengths to land high-profile ad partners and even secure a commercial spot during this year’s Super Bowl.
There’s still time to stop Google from using the same old playbook to get away with it again.
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Joel Thayer is president of the Digital Progress Institute and an attorney based in Washington, D.C.
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