A federal judge today ruled that Google online advertisement has a monopoly in parts of the market, marking another case in a year where the company was violated by the company. Last August, a federal judge ruled that Google was maintaining an illegal monopoly in search.
Judge Leone Binkema, a US District Court Judge for the eastern district of Virginia, determined that Google made a major source of revenue for the company to dominate the programtic advertising market for illegal monopoly of its advertising technology business. Google last year produced about 30.4 billion dollars in revenue worldwide, which was from advertising on other apps and websites. Now, a large portion of sales is threatened by punishment that can follow Binkma’s decision. A best-case landscape for American consumers is a browsing experience that is full of less advertisements and paywalls and more material options.
“In addition to depriving rivals of competing ability, [Google’s] Exclusion conduct damaged Google’s publisher customers, competitive process and, eventually, consumers of information on the open web, ”Brinkma wrote.
Google was violated to Section 2 of the Sharman Act in the US, Cornerstone Antitrest law, “By achieving and maintaining monopoly power in the Open-Web Display Publisher Ed Server Market and Open-Wayb Display Ed Exchange Market, and its publisher advertising (DFP) and its publisher advertisement (DFP) and AD Exchange (ADX) are illegally tied. In other words, the way Google tied parts of its advertising technology together was considered illegal.
Online advertising ends in front of consumers after undergoing a series of systems connecting publishers to advertisers. Google has long been seen as a prominent provider of equipment at almost every step in this process, arguing that the company enables the company to give preference treatment to its own system and box out the contestants. Some Prasad of Google came through acquisitions, such as the purchase of doubleClic in 2007.
But Binkema dismissed the justice department’s charge that Google illegally monopoly on the market for some of the equipment used by advertisers to buy advertisements, claiming that the government’s definition was very narrow and ill defined. As a result, Google was not determined to be a monopolist because it belongs to advertising equipment, but it was considered to be one in the market for publisher tools to sell advertising locations.
The company is bowing into the fact that not all the claims of the plaintiff are standing in the court. Google’s regulatory affairs vice-president, Lee-Oni Mulholland made a statement on X stating that Google had won “half a case” and the company planned to appeal to the other half.
“The court found that our advertisers do not harm the equipment and our acquisition, such as double clicks, competition.
The advertisement tech suit was first filed by the Department of Justice and eight in January 2023, alleging that Google illegally competed in the advertising market by acting as a powerful middleman in the advertising business and by making a big cut of advertising revenue in this process. Google has argued that the online advertising market has a lot of competition. The matter went for a test last September, and the closing arguments in November.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to the request of comment on the ruling. Jonathan Kunter, a lawyer who oversee the trial while in the department, wrote on X that Thursday’s decision is “Antitust enforcement, media industry and a major victory for free and open internet.”
In the last August, a district judge ruled for Columbia district, Amit Mehta that Google has maintained an illegal monopoly in both general discovery and general search lesson advertisements. The Department of Justice has proposed that Google should be ordered to “immediately and fully divide” its Chrome web browser, and also close partners such as Apple for preferential treatment on your iPhones. Google is fighting proposals, and a test to reach a final measure for Mehta is going to begin on Monday.
Binkma has now asked Google and Justice Department to propose a program to determine measures in the case of advertising technology. The company may be ordered to sell its advertising equipment for publishers as a result of this process.
