Closing Arguments Delivered In Google Ad Tech Monopoly Case

Google and the US Department of Justice on Monday delivered closing arguments in an antitrust case targeting the company’s advertising technology, as the second major competition case targeting the search giant this year moves toward its conclusion.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema is to decide the case and is expected to deliver a decision by the end of the year, with possible further hearings on remedies if Google is found guilty of monopolistic conduct.

The Justice Department is looking to force Google to sell off parts of its ad tech business, which it argues constitute a monopoly specifically in open-web display advertising, which refers to ads appearing on web pages.

Authorities say Google’s DoubleClick, Google Ads and AdExchange technologies all dominate their market segments, forming an illegal monopoly.

Web advertising

DoubleClick is widely used by online publishers, while AdExchange matches advertisers to publishers and Google Ads distributes adverts from a range of advertisers to a large array of websites.

Within open-web display advertising, Google controls 91 percent of the market for publisher ad servers and 87 percent for advertiser ad networks, the Justice Department argues.

The search giant, for its part, argues in effect that there is no such thing as open-web display advertising, which it says is an artificial category that doesn’t take into account other, growing forms of advertising such as social media-based ads and adverts in mobile apps.

When these other categories of digital advertising are taken into account, Google says it controls only perhaps 10 percent of the market and falling.

The Justice Department says the public is harmed by Google’s take of 36 cents on the dollar when it facilitates a transaction from end to end, while Google says this rate has fallen to 31 percent and continues to decrease, and is lower than what is offered by competitors.

“When you have an integrated system, one of the benefits is lower prices,” said Google attorney Karen Dunn on Monday in Alexandria, Virginia court.

‘Trifecta of monopolies’

The Justice Department on Monday refuted Google’s argument that the open-web display ad market is irrelevant by referring to comments from within the company itself.

Justice Department lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum cited a 2009 email from Google executive David Rosenblatt who said Google aimed to “do to display what Google did to search”.

“Google did not achieve its trifecta of monopolies by accident,” said Teitelbaum.

In a separate case brought in the District of Columbia, a federal judge ruled in August that Google’s search engine constituted an illegal monopoly.

In that case, the Justice Department said last week it wanted Google to sell off its dominant Chrome web browser, amongst other remedies, which Google argued was excessive.