The judge directed further briefing and hearing on appropriate remedies.
A federal judge has ruled that Google violated antitrust law in its advertising technology practices, marking another major loss for the company and teeing up potentially large-scale changes to its business.Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act “by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in a market for certain ad markets while “unlawfully” tying two of its products together, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page opinion on April 17.
The ruling was issued as Google headed toward potentially large-scale remedies in another antitrust case in Washington. There, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta held last year that the tech giant violated antitrust law in its search business.
Also in Washington, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is prosecuting an antitrust lawsuit against Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram. In a complaint filed in 2021, the FTC asked for a judgment that would require Meta’s divestiture of assets, including Instagram and/or WhatsApp.
The DOJ’s complaint in the ad tech case, filed in January 2023, requested an order requiring Google to divest from its ad manager suite.
Brinkema oversaw a three-week bench trial last year when Google leveled a series of arguments in its defense—primarily that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had failed to define relevant markets and that its arguments weren’t aligned with legal precedent on the issue.
Part of Brinkema’s opinion stated that the plaintiffs, which included the DOJ and various states, failed to prove a particular market involving display ads. She added, however, that the plaintiffs proved Google possessed monopoly power in its use of a publisher ad server.
“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,” Brinkema said. “Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features.”
Google did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
By Sam Dorman
