GOOGLE FACES A NEW ANTITRUST TRIAL AFTER RULING DECLARING SEARCH ENGINE A MONOPOLY

One month after a judge declared Google's search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.

- 

The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements this week to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.

The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends.

They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.

“One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement.

Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock.

In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”

Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.