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A federal judge in the US has determined that Google illegally acquired and maintained its digital advertising monopoly. This is the latest antitrust defeat against the tech giant, and as a result, they have to sell a portion of their business.
Google has dominated the market for ad exchanges and publisher ad servers, district judge Leonie Brinkema, who is the main bidect of the Virginia case, said Thursday.
Brinkema also discovered that the US Department of Justice, which led to the incident, cannot prove that Google has unfairly controlled the third component of the market, advertisers’ ad networks.
Google said: “We’ll win half of this case and sue the other half. We’re against the court’s decision on publisher tools. We’ll choose Google because publishers have many options and advertising technology tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
The ruling came last year when another federal judge in an antitrust case discovered that Google spent billions of dollars on exclusive transactions to maintain its illegal monopoly in searches. The second phase of the trial, in which the court decides on the relief, begins next week.
In a search case, DOJ asked Google to sell Chrome browsers, stop paying $200 billion each year to make it the default search engine, and share more data with its rivals.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This is a developing story
