Google is gearing up for a trial scheduled for September after the Justice Department urged a federal judge on Friday to mandate the sale of parts of its exclusive digital advertising operations.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has set the trial date for September 22 following discussions with both the DOJ and Google’s proposals for preliminary remedies. Just last month, it was found that Google was maintaining two separate illegal monopolies in the realm of digital advertising technology.
A DOJ attorney indicated that Google needs to divest its publisher’s ad server business along with its lucrative ad exchange market, which facilitates transactions between ad buyers and sellers. These publisher ad servers help websites manage their digital advertising inventory.
Federal lawyer Julia Turber Wood mentioned that completing such a mandatory sale could take several years, and emphasized that Google must provide competitors access to real-time advertising data.
In court, Google’s legal team countered that forced sales are not legally permissible and argued that the planning involved would actually harm, rather than benefit, the digital advertising sector.
In a prior ruling, Brinkema determined that Google’s actions have had a detrimental effect on online news publishers and U.S. consumers, stating that the company’s anti-competitive practices restricted competition in how ads are placed on websites.
The judge stated, “Not only has this robbed competitors of their chance to compete, but it has also adversely affected Google publishers’ customers, their competitive operations, and, ultimately, the consumers of information on the web.”
Google has already promised to appeal the judge’s ruling.
This digital advertising case is just one of Google’s ongoing legal challenges. There’s also a separate case concerning an illegal monopoly over online searches, with the DOJ pushing for Google to sell its Chrome web browsers and share search data with competitors. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is currently deliberating on this issue, with a final decision anticipated by August.
Both cases could potentially impact Google’s entire business model.
