A federal judge ruled Thursday that Google has an illegal monopoly over advertising technology, just eight months after another judge found the tech giant violated antitrust laws with its monopoly over online search.
As the Department of Justice (DOJ) pushes for a breakup, the two sides are set to meet in court again next week for a trial over the remedies in the search case.
“It’s a massive blow to Google,” said Jeffrey Shinder, founding partner of the antitrust law firm Shinder Cantor Lerner. “There’s no avoiding that conclusion.”
“Two of the pillars of its power over the internet and the adjacent ecosystems that surround the internet … have been declared unlawful and have a serious cloud over their future,” he added.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Thursday that Google has a monopoly over two markets in the ad tech space. Ad tech is used to connect publishers and advertisers online to fill ad space.
Google monopolized the market providing tools to publishers and the market connecting publishers and advertisers, referred to as an ad exchange, Brinkema found.
Monopolizing a market on its own is not illegal, however. The judge ruled that Google violated antitrust law by tying its ad tech products together and instituting anticompetitive policies that allowed it to acquire and maintain its monopoly.
“Google will fight this, but it was clearly a gut punch, and they’re going to have to go back to the drawing board to look at business model tweaks, depending on what the appeal process looks like,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told The Hill.
“I don’t believe it structurally changes their business model, but it clearly is a sign that they’re going to have to adjust their advertising strategy,” he added.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
