Justice Dept. Lawyers say US wants to break up Google’s Ad Technology
The Justice Department laid out their road map for breaking up Google’s advertising tech empire on Friday. This would be the second time in a year that they have requested to force the sale pieces of the business. The government’s comments were made during a hearing held by Judge Leonie Brinkema of U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia. She ruled last month Google had a monopoly on some portions of an expansive system that places advertisements on websites. In the original lawsuit, the government had asked the court to order Google to sell the ad technology it had acquired over the years. In the original lawsuit, the government had asked the court to force Google to sell ad technology it had acquired over the years.
To leave Google with “90 percent of publishers beholden to them is, frankly, too dangerous,” said Julia Tarver Wood, the government’s lead lawyer in the case.
Google’s lawyers said a breakup wouldn’t align with earlier legal precedent and would imperil privacy and security protections.
The Justice Department’s request is the latest legal blow to Google, which is also in the midst of a second hearing on how to remedy its monopoly over search in a federal court in Washington. In that case, the government has asked a judge to force the company to sell its popular browser, Chrome, along with other measures.
Combined, the two government requests — if granted — would most likely represent the biggest reshaping of a powerful company by the federal government since the 1980s, when AT&T split into multiple companies as part of an antitrust settlement with the Justice Department.
It remains to be seen if the judges will force a breakup, viewed among antitrust experts as the most extreme solution.
In the ad tech case, which was filed in 2023, government lawyers argued that Google had dominated the mostly invisible technology that delivers ads to websites around the internet. That system runs an auction for open ad space on a website, like a news publisher’s, in real time as the page loads.
The government argued that Google had illegally monopolized three parts of that system: tools that websites used to post their open ad space, tools used by advertisers to purchase it and the software that connected the two sides of each transaction.
Judge Brinkema ruled last month that Google had broken the law to protect its monopoly over the publisher tools and the software that connects buyers with sellers of ad space, known as an ad exchange. She said that the government had not proven Google was a monopolist in terms of the tools used by advertisers. Later, the government wants Google to sell the tools that handle other functions for publishers, like record keeping.
Google’s lead lawyer, Karen Dunn, said the plan would not comply with legal precedent. The government’s plan would be difficult to implement, even if the court were to seriously consider breaking up Google’s business. Plus, important security and privacy protections provided by Google would disappear.
“It is very likely completely impossible, what they’re talking about,” without causing serious problems, she said.
Google has instead proposed that the court require the company to change or abandon some of the practices the government said it used to cement its power, and said it would take steps to open up its ad auction bidding system in ways that would benefit publishers.
