A federal judge has ruled that Google illegally monopolized some online advertising technology markets, dealing a significant blow to the tech giant’s main revenue source.
Bloomberg reports that U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has delivered a mixed ruling in the ad tech antitrust case against Google, finding that the company violated antitrust law in the markets for advertising exchanges and ad server tools used by websites to sell ad space. However, the judge did not find Google to be a monopoly in the market for tools used by advertisers to buy display ads.
The decision marks the second time in a year that Google has been found by a court to be an illegal monopolist, following a separate case in which the company was found to monopolize the online search market. A trial is set to begin Monday in Washington to determine a remedy in that case, with the Justice Department seeking to force Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to sell off its Chrome browser.
In her 115-page opinion, Judge Brinkema wrote 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.” She found that for over a decade, Google pushed web publishers to use its tools for placing ads on websites and managing their advertising business, further entrenching its monopoly power through anticompetitive policies and the elimination of desirable product features.
The Justice Department and a group of states had initially sought to have Google’s ad tech business broken up when they filed the lawsuit in 2023. However, Judge Brinkema’s ruling set a high bar for that outcome, finding that the company’s acquisitions in the sector, including DoubleClick and Admeld, were not inherently anticompetitive.
Google stated that it would appeal the part of the case it lost, with Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, saying, “We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
The ruling is a significant victory for antitrust enforcement and the media industry, according to Jonathan Kanter, former chief of the Justice Department’s antitrust unit. “Google is now an illegal monopolist twice over,” Kanter wrote on LinkedIn.
Much of the Justice Department’s case focused on attacking Google’s past acquisitions, particularly DoubleClick, which worked with websites to sell ads. Judge Brinkema agreed that these acquisitions helped Google establish a dominant position in the ad tech stack, benefiting from “network effects” as more advertisers and publishers used its services.
While the judge found that Google’s deals boosted the company’s monopoly power, she also ruled that the government failed to show that the DoubleClick and Admeld acquisitions were anticompetitive. Additionally, Judge Brinkema determined that sanctions against Google for intentional destruction of evidence were not necessary, as she had ruled for the government on the available evidence.
The ruling dealt a significant blow to the stock of Google parent Alphabet, which sank as much as 3.2 percent following the news before slightly paring its losses. As Google faces the potential for a breakup of its ad tech business, the company now faces the challenge of convincing the court that divesting an entire portion of its business is unwarranted when only certain aspects were litigated.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
