Judge Rules Google Has Illegal Online Advertising Tech Monopoly

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has been found guilty of having an illegal monopoly in online advertising technology by Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Alphabet’s stock declined 1.5% by Thursday noon.

According to a Reuters report, the judge’s ruling observed that Google had broken the law to dominate the online advertising technology space. A part of Google’s advertising business is aided by the acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008.

The antitrust lawsuit was brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, which sought to break up Google’s advertising business, or at least force it to divest Google Ad Manager.

DOJ argued that Google engaged in monopolistic practices by blocking competition through acquisitions, customer lock-ins, and controlling how transactions were made in the online advertising market.

In the lawsuit filed in 2023, DOJ lawyers argued that Google used its size to “crush competition,” according to a report in The New York Times. The department also said that Google controlled 87% of the online advertising technology market at the time.

In a separate antitrust lawsuit, the DOJ has requested that courts order Google to sell the Chrome browser, aiming to end the company’s dominance in online search.

Judge Brinkema’s ruling comes a day after a class action lawsuit was filed against the company in the U.K., alleging that the company abused its “near-total dominance” in the online search business.

The lawsuit, filed by academic Or Brook with the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, alleged that Google restricted competing search engines by leveraging its market dominance.

Earlier in September 2024, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority provisionally found that Google used anti-competitive practices in open-display advertising technology.

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