A federal judge ruled that Google illegally monopolized some online advertising technology markets, giving a significant blow to the main source of income of the technological giant.
Bloomberg reports that the American district judge Leonie Brinkema has issued a mixed decision in the antimonopoly case of advertising technology against Google, discovering that the company violated the antimonopoly law in the advertising exchanges markets and advertisement tools used by space. However, the judge did not consider Google to be a monopoly in the tools market used by advertisers to buy screen ads.
The decision marks the second time in a year that Google has found that a court is an illegal monopolist, after a separate case in which the company monopolizes the online search market. A trial will begin on Monday in Washington to determine a remedy in that case, with the Department of Justice seeking to force Alphabet, the Google parent company, to sell its Chrome browser.
In his 115 -page opinion, Judge Brinkema wrote that “Google has intentionally dedicated itself to a series of anti -competitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the editor’s advertisement server and advertisement market markets for open network display advertising.” He discovered that for approximately a decade, Google pressed web editors to use their tools to place ads on websites and administer their advertising business, even more entertain their monopoly power through anti -comppetitive policies and the elimination of desirable features.
The Department of Justice and a group of states had initially sought that the Google advertising technology business was broken when they filed the lawsuit in 2023. However, Judge Brinkema’s ruling established a high bar for that result, discovering that the company’s acquisitions in the sector were not inherently anti -competitions.
Google declared that he would appeal the part of the case he lost, with Lee-Anthe Mulholland, vice president of Google Regulatory Affairs, saying: “We do not agree with the Court’s decision regarding our editor tools. The editors have toles and chose, affordable and effective.”
The ruling is a significant victory for the antimonopoly application and the media industry, according to Jonathan Kanter, former head of the antimonopoly unit of the justice departments. “Google is now an illegal monopolist twice,” Kanter wrote on LinkedIn.
Much of the case of the Department of Justice focused on attacking Google’s adjustment acquisitions, in part Doblosa, which worked with websites to sell advertisements. Judge Brinkema agreed that thesis acquisitions helped Google establish a dominant position in the advertising technology stack, benefiting from the “network effects” as more advertisers and editors used their services.
While the judge discovered that Google agreements increased the company’s monopoly power, it also ruled that the government did not show that Double and Admeld’s acquisitions were anticompetites. In addition, Judge Brinkema determined that the sanctions against Google for the intentional destruction of the evidence were not necessary, since he had declared the Government about the available evidence.
The failure offers a significant blow to the Google matrix alphabet, which sank up to 3.2 percent after the news before slightly reducing their doubts. As Google faces the potential of a rupture of its advertising technology business, the company now faces the challenge of convincing the court that disinteering a complete part of its business is unjustified when only certain aspects were litigated.
Read more in Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter of Knitbart News that cover issues of freedom of expression and online censorship.