Google Ad Monopoly Remedy Trial To Begin On Friday

Google and the US Justice Department are to return to court on Friday, 2 May, to begin the remedies phase of the tech giant’s competition trial after a judge this month found the company possessed an illegal monopoly in two online advertising markets.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia federal court set the hearing date on Friday and said it aims to initially get a general sense of potential remedies before focusing on specifics.

Brinkema on 17 April ruled Google had wilfully acquired and maintained monopoly power in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers.

Remedy proposals

The ruling followed a non-jury trial last year.

During the remedy phase of the trial, Brinkema is to consider and eventually rule on what measures Google must take to restore competition.

The Justice Department has indicated it wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as well as taking other measures, arguing strong remedies are necessary.

Arguing for narrower measures, Google had said it renders a valuable service by maintaining the Chrome open-source underlying code, which is used by other browser makers, and if the browser were sold off this might no longer be the case.

A senior executive at AI pioneer OpenAI, ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley, last week told the court that his company would be interested in buying Chrome if antitrust enforcers are successful in forcing the Alphabet unit to sell the popular web browser.

“For over a decade, Google has tied its publisher ad server and ad exchange together through contractual policies and technological integration, which enabled the company to establish and protect its monopoly power in these two markets” Brinkema wrote.

“Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features.”

The ruling could allow prosecutors to argue for a breakup of Google’s advertising products.

Search monopoly

The Justice Department said that Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.

Brinkema’s decision came after Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August 2024 that Google’s search also constituted an illegal monopoly.

Judge Mehta found that Google had violated antitrust law in part by spending billions of dollars to maintain its position as the default search engine on smartphones and browsers.

Alphabet pays Apple, Samsung, Mozilla and others billions of dollars to make Google the default search engine on their devices.

Google has denied the government’s claims in both cases and said it would appeal.