DoJ Wins Another Victory: Google's Ad Tech Empire Violates Antitrust Laws

Google has an amerciable monopoly successful online advertising, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said today. Google is blameworthy of "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power" successful the steadfast advertisement server marketplace that websites usage for ads and the open-web show advertisement speech marketplace that matches advertisers with websites.


Publishers that wanted to usage Google's advertisement speech were besides required to usage its advertisement server, which disadvantaged competing platforms. Google's "First Look" diagnostic gave its advertisement speech the archetypal close of refusal for impressions, and "Last Look" fto its level measure bids from competitors earlier making its ain bid.

Google aboriginal rolled retired Unified Pricing Rules limiting the pricing strategies that publishers utilized to trim dependence connected Google ads and surface retired low-quality content, which the tribunal says favored Google's advertisement tech maturation portion harming rival advertisement tech products. Google's standard and "vast repositories" of information astir advertisers, publishers, and users limits competition.

According to the court, Google's actions person resulted successful important harm to advertisers, publishers, and consumers.

Google could beryllium required to divest its steadfast advertisement server and speech products, marque changes to however it operates to forestall anticompetitive practices successful the future, and wage fines. The tribunal plans to determine connected due remedies astatine a aboriginal hearing.

Today's antitrust ruling comes arsenic Google gears up to look disconnected with the U.S. Department of Justice implicit its online hunt monopoly. The DoJ plans to propulsion for Google to sell disconnected its Chrome browser.
This article, "DoJ Wins Another Victory: Google's Ad Tech Empire Violates Antitrust Laws" archetypal appeared connected MacRumors.com

Discuss this article successful our forums