A US District Court Judge ruled Thursday that Alphabet’s Google unlawfully monopolized two critical markets for online advertising technology, a huge setback for the tech company. Judge Leonie Brinkema, sitting in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that Google illegally monopolized the markets for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges. Those services are at the center of online advertising, facilitating interaction between buyers and sellers.
But the judge rejected arguments by US antitrust enforcers that Google had a monopoly in the market for advertiser ad networks, deciding that the evidence put forward was not sufficient. Even with this partial success, Google said it would appeal the ruling.
We won half of this case and we are going to appeal the other half,” declared Google’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland. Mulholland stood by the company’s practices, contesting that its ad tools are effective, budget-friendly, and have been opted for by publishers over rivals based on their simplicity.
The ruling, after a long trial by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and a group of states, now opens the way for another hearing to decide what action Google has to take in order to re-establish competition in the ad tech industry. This may involve the company being told to divest some of its business, like Google Ad Manager, which comprises its publisher ad server and ad exchange.
Google is now under increasing pressure, as it also has a standalone trial next week in Washington, DC, regarding the DOJ’s demand to compel the company to divest its Chrome browser and put in place steps to combat its dominance of online search.
