A federal judge in Virginia ruled against breaking up Google's ad tech business after Google was found to be a monopoly over its ad technology platforms. The judge ordered Google to end its practices that depress ad rates for web publishers, but declined to order divestiture of Google’s ad exchange and other technology.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, VP Regulatory Affairs at Google published a statement on X saying:
"We’re very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ's proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow."
As a note, this is seperate from the soft ruling of the first part of the Google monopoly ruling.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Justice Department’s request to dismantle Google’s online advertising business, marking the second time the company has fended off the threat of divestiture after being found to have illegally maintained a monopoly.U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s order follows her ruling last year that Google illegally monopolized the sophisticated online-auction technology that decides which ads appear on websites. The Justice Department argued that making Google sell off its ad exchange was the only way to curb its dominance and open the market to new competition.
Reuters wrote:
Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia rejected U.S. antitrust enforcers' bid to force a sale of Google's online advertising exchange.While the ad exchange is a small part of Google's business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the U.S. Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies.
U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. She accepted most of the parties' proposed behavioral remedies.
The NY Times wrote:
Judge Brinkema, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, did not publicly reveal her full opinion, but previewed it in a short filing. She said Google must still adopt some changes to its ad tech business, according to an entry on the public docket for the lawsuit.The court said Judge Brinkema had granted “most” of the changes proposed by both parties to Google’s business practices that the Justice Department and Google had proposed, which included sharing more information with publishers.
The changes fall short of forcing the company to sell off parts of the business, which the government had requested.
Interesting how Google dodged being broken up twice, under two different monopoly rulings.
Forum discussion at X.
Update: Google removed its statement from X, I am not sure why.
