The Path of Enshittification: Apple Ads, Google's Toll Booth, and Meta's $18B Escape Hatch
Send us Fan Mail
Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal go guest-free this week to connect three stories that are really one story. Apple has launched ads in Apple Maps — contextual, largely on-device, and with no way to turn them off — which quietly undercuts the "you're not the product" brand Apple spent years building. Google is expanding what it charges for: starting October 1, some missed Local Services Ads calls become billable leads, and LSAs have moved into Google's main ad organization as ad real estate keeps eating the results page.
Then there's Meta's roughly $18 billion youth-safety…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.