Google loses adtech monopoly case

The US Department of Justice has won its antitrust case against Google, which accused the company of operating a monopoly in the advertising technology industry. In a ruling on Thursday, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema says Google’s anticompetitive practices “substantially harmed” publisher customers and users on the web.

“Plaintiffs have proven that Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive
acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets
for open-web display advertising,“ the ruling reads. ”For over a decade, Google has tied its publisher ad server and ad exchange together through contractual policies and technological integration, which enabled
the company to establish and protect its monopoly power in these two markets.”

Over the course of three weeks, the DOJ argued that illegally monopolized three separate markets in the ad tech space: that for publisher ad tools, advertiser ad networks, and the ad exchanges that facilitate transactions. They also argued that Google illegally tied together their publisher ad server and ad exchange in violation of antitrust law. The upshot, according to the government, is that Google collects monopoly profits at the expense of publishers and advertisers, who have a worse experience with no real alternatives.

Google, on the other hand, argued that the government’s whole view of the market was contrived and not based in reality. Google’s tools help publishers and advertisers make money, and the fact that it has tools in different parts of the market just helps them work well together to consumers’ benefit, they said. Google has legitimate business reasons for its behavior and the government simply wants to dictate how it can do business, they argued.

The decision comes as Google and the DOJ are getting ready to meet in another federal court across the river in DC for the remedies phase of the search trial. In that case, the DOJ under the Biden administration proposed breaking up Google by spinning out its Chrome browser and forcing it to syndicate its search results.