Google has been found to have violated antitrust law, again.
A federal judge on Thursday ruled Alphabet, Google’s parent company, illegally maintained a monopoly over online advertising technology that “substantially harmed” its customers and stifled competition.
The U.S. Justice Department, over the course of a three-week trial, has “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 said.
The ruling, made by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, continued: “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.”
Thursday’s ruling comes less than a year after a different federal judge found Google illegally maintained a monopoly over online search. Another trial is set to start next week in Washington, which will weigh the Justice Department’s request to breakup Google by having it sell its Chrome Browser, among other potential remedies.
At the heart of this case was Google’s network of programs that sell ads on news sites and other webpages. The government argued Google held 87% of the online ad market by illegally tying together the tools, networks and ad exchanges that publishers use. Publishers had no real alternatives for online ads, allowing Google to charge monopoly prices, the government argued.
Google had argued publishers and advertisers had alternatives like TikTok, Amazon and Meta, but that was rejected by the court.
The ruling now adds another avenue for Google’s $1.85 trillion business to be broken up.
Google, soon after the ruling, said it would be appealing.
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s VP of Regulatory Affairs, said in a statement. “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.”
