Alphabet’s Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a federal judge said on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech titan in an antitrust case brought by the US.
According to the Alexandria, Virginia, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s decision, prosecutors may be able to make the case for a division of Google’s advertising products. The US Department of Justice has recommended that Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
A Washington judge will hear a trial in April on the DOJ’s request to force Google to sell its Chrome browser and take other steps to end its dominance in online search, putting the company in danger of being ordered to sell assets or alter its business practices as it enters 2025.
Google has previously explored selling off its ad exchange to appease European antitrust regulators, Reuters reported in September.
Brinkema presided over a three-week trial in which the DOJ and a group of states aimed to demonstrate that Google controlled the markets for advertiser ad networks and publisher ad servers, as well as the market for ad exchanges, which act as a middleman between buyers and sellers.
Prosecutors claimed during the trial that Google employed traditional monopoly-building strategies, such as snuffing out rivals through acquisitions, enticing consumers to use its products, and regulating how transactions took place in the internet ad market.
Google contended that the case was centered on the past, when the business was still developing mechanisms to integrate with rival goods. As digital ad spending shifted to apps and streaming video, prosecutors also disregarded competition from tech firms like Comcast and Amazon.com, according to Google’s attorney.
