US District Judge Leonie Brinkema handed the ruling down in Virginia, siding with the Department of Justice and 17 states who claimed Google’s ad tech “stack” allowed it to shut out rivals and shake down the open web.
“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,” wrote Judge Brinkema.
The court found the ad goliath broke antitrust law by muscling in on ad exchanges and servers, bundling services and forcing clients to pay up or miss out. The outcome could see Google forced to offload major parts of its ad empire—still its biggest cash cow.
The case is part of a broader three-pronged legal assault on Google. Another DOJ lawsuit could force a divestment of the Chrome browser and parts of the search business. A third, driven by Epic Games and several attorneys general, targets its dominance over Android app distribution and in-app payments through the Play Store.
Though the DOJ didn’t get everything it wanted—losing one claim about networks for buying display ads—California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta claimed a solid win.
“Advertising is key to a business’s success, and Google has been playing unfairly in the advertising space,” Bonta said.
“As the fifth largest economy in the world, California has an outsized role in protecting competition and a vibrant economy where business can thrive on merits, not on illegal business practices — today, we’ve done just that."
Google’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland, tried to salvage face: “We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” she posted on X.
“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.”
That legal defiance didn’t help Alphabet’s stock price, which dipped in early Thursday trading—hardly soothing for the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street.
Despite a conservative-tilted Supreme Court, US regulators aren’t backing off. Meta is currently battling its own antitrust case over claims it bought rivals to corner the social media market. Amazon is being scrutinised for its £3.6 billion (€4.2 billion) One Medical deal and its Prime subscription traps.
Alison Rice of Accountable Tech reckons the crackdown is long overdue. “We’re excited to see such enthusiasm,” she said.
“The mechanism and the model that Big Tech has been using is taking advantage of the power that they have over this entire ecosystem to leverage nefarious designs and weaponise them in order to drive profits.”