A US judge ruled Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some ad tech. This is the second time a judge ruled Google willfully engaged in monopolistic practices. The remedies for these rulings are still being worked out but may strengthen the case to have Google's business broken up.
The 115 page PDF court document concluded, "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."
Google quickly responded on X saying, "we won half of this case and we will appeal the other half" of the US antitrust ruling, and "we disagree" with the decision on its publisher tools.
Here is the full conclusion written by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia:
Plaintiffs have 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. 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. Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features. 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. Accordingly, Google is liable under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.For the foregoing reasons, by an Order to be issued with this Memorandum Opinion, Count III (monopolization of the advertiser ad network market) will be dismissed, and the parties will be ordered to submit a joint proposed schedule for briefing and arguing their positions as to the remedies that should be imposed in light of Google have been found liable for monopolization of the publisher ad server market (Count I), monopolization of the ad exchange market (Count II), and unlawful tying of AdX and DFP (Count IV).
Last August, Google also was ruled a monopoly, which we covered.
There are a number of remedies being explored over these rulings. According to Axios, The DOJ and 17 US states that brought the antitrust case seek to force Google to sell off its "network" ad business, which is about 12% of Alphabet's total revenue.
The ruling goes on to read:
Google evolved from a garage-based startup to a multitrillion dollar company in little more than twenty years. Much of that growth was funded by digital advertising. In keeping with its professed mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google provides many of its key services at no financial cost to Internet users.Over the past two decades, Google has established increasingly detailed knowledge about the billions of people who have used its products, including by collecting data pertaining to their web browsing, search activity, physical location, demographic characteristics, app usage, communications, shopping activity, and device and network information.
In sum, Plaintiffs have shown that Google engaged in “willful acquisition or maintenance of [its monopoly] power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident” by tying DFP to AdX and committing a series of exclusionary and anticompetitive acts to entrench its monopoly power in two adjacent product markets. Kodak, 504 U.S. at 481 (quoting Grinnell, 384 U.S. at 570–71). The procompetitive justifications that Google proffers for its anticompetitive conduct are both invalid and insufficient, and any procompetitive benefits of this conduct were far outweighed by its anticompetitive effects. Therefore, Google cannot evade liability under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
It looks even more evil:
Google’s internal messaging application deleted records of chats between employees unless an employee explicitly turned on “chat history,” and the application’s user interface made it difficult for employees to turn on chat history for every conversation they had. Chat deletions occurred when employees discussed substantive topics at issue in this litigation and continued after the federal government began an antitrust investigation into Google’s conduct.Google employees and executives also misused the attorney-client privilege.
Google’s systemic disregard of the evidentiary rules regarding spoliation of evidence and its misuse of the attorney-client privilege may well be sanctionable.
This is a big deal and a lot of the folks in our industry were waiting for this to drop.
Again, what will these rulings lead to exactly is still not known.
Here is the first thing I saw Google respond with so far:
“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. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they…
— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) April 17, 2025
Here is some commentary:
!!! "this exclusionary ****** conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers******, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web." /2 pic.twitter.com/zR5u902Lph
— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) April 17, 2025
Major loss for Google, and major win for anti-trust law, as federal judge rules that Google is a monopolist in case brought by the Trump DOJ, continued by the Biden DOJ, and now pursued by the new Trump DOJ (same with the current anti-trust suit against Meta): https://t.co/02Hs51TATd
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 17, 2025
From the NYT article about the Google ruling: “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,” said Judge… https://t.co/ElH2Rg7rWs
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 17, 2025
Forum discussion at X.
