DOJ Wins Google Ads Antitrust Case
David McCabe (PDF, via Hacker News):
Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in aruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.
Remedies have not been announced yet.
Publishers that wanted to use Google’s ad exchange were also required to use its ad server, which disadvantaged competing platforms. Google’s “First Look” feature gave its ad exchange the first right of refusal for impressions, and “Last Look” let its platform assess bids from competitors before making its own bid.
Google later rolled out Unified Pricing Rules limiting the pricing strategies that publishers used to reduce dependence on Google ads and screen out low-quality content, which the court says favored Google’s ad tech growth while harming rival ad tech products.
OpenAI would consider purchasing the Chrome browser if Google is forced to sell it as a remedy for anticompetitive search practices, ChatGPT product lead Nick Turley said today.
Previously:
- Mozilla Also Defends Google Revenue Sharing Agreement
- Apple to Defend Google Revenue Sharing Agreement
- DOJ Wants Google to Sell Chrome and De-Google Android
- Google Search and Ads Monopoly
- DOJ Investigating Apple-Google Default Search Engine Deal
2 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I’m glad this is happening but OpenAI is the last company I want in control of anything as popular as Chrome
Really, Google should be forced to spin off something else, or multiple things. Like spinning off Chrome, Gmail, and YouTube into its own company
