Google violated antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in digital advertising technology, a federal judge ruled Thursday in a decision hailed by content companies as one that will potentially open up a primary revenue stream.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of Alexandria, VA, 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.”
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“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,” the judge wrote. “Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features.”
“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.”
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The judge dismissed one part of the government’s case, challenging Google over the advertiser ad network market. That is distinguished from the two areas of the ad ecosystem where the judge ruled Google did maintain a monopoly, the publisher ad server market and the ad exchange market.
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The ruling raises the potential that portions of Google’s business will be broken up. The judge said that a briefing schedule would be set to determine remedies, and the government has said the company would have to shed part of its ad business, Google Ad Manager suite. The DOJ was joined by 17 other states in the lawsuit.
Content companies claim that Google’s dominance over digital ad technologies — which publishers depend on to sell ads and advertisers use to buy spots— has stifled competition and reduced their revenue.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president of regulatory affairs for the company, said in a statement that they plan to appeal.
“The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition,” she said. “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 against Google was the second federal antitrust lawsuit it has lost in less than a year. In August, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled that Google acted to maintain a monopoly over the search business. The Justice Department is urging a judge to force Google to sell its Chrome browser.
Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade association representing major digital content publishers, said in a statement, “This ruling underscore the global harm caused by Google’s practices, which have deprived premium publishers worldwide of critical revenue, undermining their ability to sustain high-quality journalism and entertainment. Today’s step is a significant step toward restoring competition and accountability in the digital advertising ecosystem.”
Kint’s group includes Disney, Fox, Paramount, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery among its members.
The judge’s ruling came during the same week that another landmark antitrust trial is taking place in federal court. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified earlier this week in the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against his company. The government claims that Meta’s purchase of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were made to maintain anticompetitive dominance in social media networking.
Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other executives from big tech companies all attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration, visibility seen as a way to ingratiate themselves with the new administration. But so far, the administration has kept the cases going. That also includes an FTC antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that was filed during the Biden administration.
