Google is back in court, faces claims over internet ads
Google returned to the courtroom Monday to face allegations that the search giant unlawfully maintained its dominance in the online advertising market.
The trial comes after a federal judge ruled last month in a separate case that Google has an illegal monopoly on web searches. It focuses on a lawsuit U.S. regulators filed last year that accuses the company of engaging in anticompetitive practices that include purchasing rivals and forcing publishers to use its tools.
The antitrust lawsuits against Google underscore the government’s efforts to rein in Big Tech. News outlets, which have faced mass layoffs and cuts, are struggling to compete against tech companies that collect a vast amount of data on their users to offer targeted advertising.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported more than $200 billion in ad revenue last year, an amount that continues to grow.
The antitrust case sets the stage for a potential breakup of Google’s advertising and search businesses or an unwinding of acquisitions that have been pivotal to the tech giant’s growth, legal experts say. Some of Google’s biggest ad company deals include the purchase of DoubleClick and AdMob, the latter of which allows mobile app developers to sell ads.
Shubha Ghosh, a law professor at Syracuse University, said the intent of antitrust laws is to create more dynamic competition.
“At the same level that people are concerned about big government, there’s a concern about the private sector becoming too big,” he said.
Filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and a group of states, the lawsuit also alleges the Mountain View, Calif., company keeps a tight hold on technology that gives it an illegal level of control over the selling and buying of online advertisements.
“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”
Regulators have accused Google of stifling innovation, harming publishers, advertisers and online users. As online publishers attract fewer ad dollars, they have fewer resources to create content, according to the lawsuit.
Google has denied the claims, saying the case is built on an outdated understanding of how internet advertising works as advertisers have shifted their focus to social media and streaming companies in an effort to reach audiences.
In a blog post about the trial, Google said that ad sellers and buyers have options but that they choose its ad tools because they’re affordable and effective.
“By picking winners and losers in a highly competitive industry, the DOJ risks making it more expensive for small businesses to grow and for websites and apps to make money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in the post.
The trial, which will be decided by a judge instead of a jury, comes on the heels of the case over Google’s search engine. In that one, a judge in the District of Columbia found that the company had cornered internet searches in part by making tens of billions of dollars in payments each year to companies such as Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine on iPhones and other devices.
As the trial continues, the outcome of the case will be closely watched.