DOJ, Google Make Closing Arguments in Advertising Antitrust Trial

The U.S. Department of Justice and Google both delivered closing arguments in the U.S. antitrust trial concerning Google’s ad business. As with the similar online search antitrust case that Google recently lost, the federal government argued that Google’s monopoly of this market is illegal. And as with that case, Google could be forced to divest itself of products and services, in this case three businesses tied to online advertising.

“Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist,” DOJ prosecutor Aaron Teitelbaum told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema today, referring to the three related Google ad businesses it’s accused of abusing, DoubleClick, Google Ads, and AdX (AdExchange). “These are the markets that make the free and open internet possible … [But] for more than a decade, Google has rigged the rules of [ad] auctions.”

“Google’s conduct is a story of innovation in response to competition,” Google lead lawyer Karen Dunn retorted in an equally pithy summary.

The DOJ and several U.S. states sued Google for abusing its online advertising monopoly in January 2023, and the European Commission followed up with a similar accusation in six months later. In both cases, regulators have proactively suggested that the only suitable outcome is to force Google to sell off its advertising businesses because of the scope of its dominance and abuses.

In the most recent quarter, 66 percent of Google’s revenues, or almost $66 billion, came from advertising. But this antitrust case concerns only a small percentage of that: Ad revenues from Google Search and YouTube are not part of the complaint, and won’t be impacted if Google loses this case.

But Google losing seems like a solid bet. During the September trial, the government argued that Google owns 87 percent of the market for selling online ads, and that it has consisted closed the vice on competition by illegally favoring its own services while raising feeds and lowering payouts to websites and other online publishers that rely on this income to survive. And it produced an internal Google email claiming that the three ad businesses it owned were similar to “if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE [New York Stock Exchange].”

Google’s argument, that it has innovated and has competition, is about as specious as it is obvious. But the online giant says that this business is relatively tiny if you factor in all forms of advertising. And it blames “handful of rivals and several mammoth publishers” for the complaints that led them to the trial.

Unlike the Judge overseeing Google’s search case, this one is going to wrap up quickly: Judge Brinkema will rule on the case before the end of the year and then schedule remedy hearings, if necessary, in early 2025.