The decision made Thursday by the American district judge Leonie Brinkema, in Virginia, follows a separate decision rendered in August, concluding that the eponymous search engine of Google illegally exploited its dominant position to hinder competition and innovation.
After the United States Ministry of Justice had targeted the ubiquitous Google search engine under the first administration of Donald Trump, the same ministry attacked the lucrative digital advertising network of the company in 2023, under the next administration of Joe Biden, in order to undermine the power that Google has accumulated since its creation in a garage of Silicon Valley in 1998.
Although the antitrust authorities have been successful each time, the battle may continue for several years, Google trying to have the two monopoly decisions canceled while progressing in the new very lucrative technological field of artificial intelligence.
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The next step in this last case is a phase of sanctions that will probably start at the end of the year or at the start of next year. The so -called “repair” hearings in the research monopoly case must start on Monday in Washington. Lawyers of the Ministry of Justice will try to convince the district judge Amit Mehta to impose a heavy sanction, in particular the obligation for Google to sell its Chrome web browser.
A Marketing Machine
The 115 -page decision of the Brinkema judge is centered on the marketing machine that Google has spent the last 17 years to create around its search engine and other widely used products and services, including its Chrome browser, your YouTube videos and digital cards.
This system has largely built around a series of acquisitions, the first of which was the acquisition by Google of the DoubleClick online advertising specialist in 2008, for US $ 3.2 billion. The American regulatory authorities approved these transactions before realizing that they had offered the Mountain View company, California, a platform to manipulate prices in an ecosystem on which many websites depend on their income and which offers an essential marketing link to consumers.
The lawyers of the Ministry of Justice argued that Google had established and maintained dominant positions on the market thanks to a technological trio used by website publishers to sell advertising spaces on their web pages, as well as by the technology used by advertisers to disseminate their advertisements with consumers, and by advertising platforms that organize automated auction in a few fractions of second to be bought and Sellers.
Although the judgment of Leonie Brinkema did not fully give reason to the Ministry of Justice, the judge concluded that Google abused its power to stifle competition to the detriment of online publishers forced to rely on its advertising network and its pricing to generate income. Judge Brinkema issued his decision after evaluating the evidence presented during a long trial which ended just before Thanksgiving last year.
“For more than ten years, Google has linked its advertising server and its advertising exchange platform through contractual policies and technological integrations, which has enabled it to establish and protect its monopoly on these two markets,” wrote Brinkema Judge. Google has further strengthened its monopoly by imposing anti -competitive policies on its customers and removing features of attractive products. ”
Despite this reprimand, the Brinkema judge also concluded that Google had not violated the law during the acquisition of DoubleClick or when the company continued this operation a few years later by buying another service, Admeld.
Although these acquisitions allowed Google to acquire a monopoly on two adjacent markets of advertising technology, they are not enough, taken in isolation, to prove that Google has acquired or kept this monopoly by exclusion practices.
This observation could help Google counter any attempt to force it to sell its advertising technology to put an end to its monopolistic behavior.
Google wants to appeal
The Ministry of Justice did not immediately comment on the decision. In a statement, Google announced its intention to appeal the decision.
“We disagree with the court’s decision concerning our publishing tools,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice-president of Google regulatory affairs. Publishers have many options and choose Google, because our advertising tools are simple, affordable and effective. ”
Analysts, like Brian Pitz of BMO Markets, predicted that Google would probably lose the trial, thus preparing investors on the last setback suffered by the company and its parent company, Alphabet, whose action lost 1 % in the afternoon. The action of alphabet has dropped by 20 % since the start of the year.
As in the case of monopoly on search engines, Google and his parent company Alphabet categorically denied the allegations of the Ministry of Justice. Their lawyers argued that the government had largely based its position on an archaic design of an market that existed ten years ago, while underestimating a highly competitive market for advertising expenses, including Meta Platforms, the Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Comcast parent company.
The market as defined in the case of the Ministry of Justice did not include advertisements broadcast on mobile applications, continuous television services or other platforms to which Internet users are increasingly migrating, which prompted Karen Dunn, lawyer for Google, to compare the definition of government to a “temporal capsule with a blackberry, an iPod and a blockbuster video card” during its declaration of opening of the trial last September.
During the trial, lawyers of the Ministry of Justice underlined the damage caused to press publishers by the alleged domination of Google on the market. Witnesses of Gannett, the publisher of USA Today and other newspapers, and News Corp., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, have testified to the difficulties encountered and the absence, according to them, of replacement solutions to Google’s advertising technology.
These companies are based on online advertising to finance their information activities and offer their articles for free articles on the Internet, have argued by government lawyers.
The government is now able to try to dismantle this advertising system. When the complaint was filed more than two years ago, under the Biden administration, the Ministry of Justice said that Google should be forced to sell, at least, its Ad Manager product, which includes the technology used by website publishers and the announcement exchange system.
