Zen Media CEO Shama Hyder weighs in on the DOJ calling for the break up of Google and the sale of its Chrome browser.
A federal judge ruled Alphabet-owned Google has monopolies in the online publisher ad server and ad exchange markets.
That ruling was from U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Judge Leonie Brinkema.
In her ruling, she said 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.”
Logo of Google on its skyscraper in Toronto, Canada, July 29, 2024. (Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via / Getty Images)
“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 powers,” part of her ruling said. “Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features.”
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She found “exclusionary conduct” by Google “substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the web.”
The federal government and 17 states that made up the plaintiffs in the case had also alleged Google had a monopoly in another ad-tech market – advertiser ad networks – but Brinkema found their arguments on that insufficient, according to the ruling.
The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled. It is the second ruling that Google violated antitrust laws, following a similar judgment in a case over online search.
A view of Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on March 23, 2024. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via / Getty Images)
In August of last year, another federal judge found Alphabet was in breach of federal antitrust laws as it reinforced its dominant position over online searches and related advertising. A Google spokesperson told at that time it planned to appeal that decision.
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Following the Thursday ruling in the ad-tech case against Google, Lee-Ann Mulholland, Google vice president of regulatory affairs, said the company “won half of this case” and “will appeal the other half.”
“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 trial over Google’s ad-tech occurred over a few weeks in September of last year.
That arose out of a lawsuit that the federal government and eight states filed in January 2023. Nine other states joined the lawsuit in April of that year.
In this photo illustration, a Google logo is displayed on a smartphone, Oct. 24, 2023. (Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via / Getty Images)
The 17 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington and West Virginia, according to Brinkema’s ruling.
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Google now faces the possibility of two U.S. courts ordering it to sell assets or change its business practices. A judge in Washington will hold a trial next week on the Justice Department’s request to make Google sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to end its dominance in online search.
Reuters, ’ Grady Trimble and Eric Revell contributed to this report.