Google “intentionally” monopolized online advertising market, US judge’s rules

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The US Federal Judge ruled Google illegally acquiring and supporting a monopoly in digital advertising, the last lesion of the antitrust plant for the technology giant, which could cause it to be forced to deprive part of its business.

Leoni Brynkem, District Judge, who presided over the Virginia case, said on Thursday Google “Intentionally” monopolized two parts of the digital advertising market: technology selling online publishers for sale advertising space, and the largest exchange on which businesses offer advertising.

However, Brikema found that the US Justice Ministry, which started the case, could not prove that Google had unfairly dominated the third component of the market, advertising networks.

The ruling comes after the federal judge in a separate Antitrust case Last year, the company spent billions of dollars on exclusive transactions to keep an illegal monopoly search.

The second stage of this lawsuit, at which the court will determine the remedies that may include Google’s compulsion selling parts of its business, begins next week.

Doj asked for Google’s search business to sell it Chrome browserStop $ 20 billion in Apple each year to become its search engine and share more data with competitors.

Brinkema wrote on Thursday: “For more than a decade, Google connected its publisher AD and advertising together through contract policy and technological integration, which allowed the company to create and protect its monopoly power in these two markets.”

“Google also secured its monopoly power by introducing an anti-component policy to its customers and eliminating the desired product features,” she added.

But she rejected how Doj tried to determine the third part of the market, saying that the term “advertising advertising network” was a rarity in the industry and “unnecessarily excluded (s)”.

Google said, “We have won half this case, and we will appeal the other half … We disagree with the court’s decision on our publisher. The publisher has many options and they choose Google because our advertising technology tools are simple, affordable and effective.”

The resolution-new victory for former antitrust officials appointed former President Joe Biden, who started and considered the case before Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Jonathan Kantier, a former head of the DOJ antitrust unit, said in a report on X on Thursday: “Today is a great victory for antitrust law, media industry and free and open Internet … Google is now twice an illegal monopolist.”

Antimonopoly officials appointed by Trump have strongly signal that they intend to take a tough position on forced execution, especially against great technologies. The US Federal Trade Commission this week started doing its The case against meta In a monopoly court in the Federal Court of Washington.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a comment request.

In the reaction, the head of the EU competition, Teresa Ribera, said: “We make note of the decision and we will study it with interest. The case analyzed by the European Commission is ongoing.”

The commission also investigates Google for promoting its own advertising services.

Additional Barbara Mons report in Brussels.