Google Has Illegal Monopoly In Ad Tech, US Judge Rules

William Kovacicformer Republican FTC Chair

Two courts have reached similar conclusions in product markets that go to the heart of Google’s business,

said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

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,

Brinkema said in her ruling

The court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don't harm competition,

Mulholland said

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,

Brinkema wrote

Letitia Jamesnew York attorney general

Google's monopolies allow it to soak up excessive profits, leaving less for the workers and businesses whose livelihoods depend on online advertising,

said New York attorney general Letitia James, whose state took part in the suit

The open web is so deeply rooted in Google's advertising technology that any change to the status quo could crush vulnerable publishers,

the analyst said

We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,

the company's vice president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a statement

The extent of the fallout will depend on the legal remedies employed,

Mitchell-Wolf told AFP

There is no such thing as breaking up Google in the abstract,

Allensworth said

A breakup of how [Google] drives their advertising revenue would be detrimental to the overall business model,

said Dan Morgan, an analyst with Synovus

I don’t think we have really seen this before,

said Vanderbilt University law professor Rebecca Allensworth

We disagree with the court’s decision regarding our publisher tools,

said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs

It’s the vertical integration that led to the conduct Brinkema found problematic,

she said, referring to how Google operates the different pieces of the business together

It is likely that he is writing on a clean slate and she is not,

she said