The Justice Department sued Google for monopolizing digital advertising technologies. OPA

Today, the Department of Justice, along with the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Google for infringing its monopoly over several digital ad technology products. Sherman Act 1 and 2.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that Google monopolizes key digital advertising technologies, collectively known as the “ad technology stack,” that website publishers rely on to sell advertising and advertisers rely on buying. Advertise and reach potential customers. Web publishers use ad tech tools to generate advertising revenue that supports the creation and maintenance of an active open web, giving the public unprecedented access to ideas, artistic expression, information, goods and services. In this antitrust lawsuit, the Department of Justice and state attorneys general seek to restore competition in these important markets and seek equitable and monetary relief on behalf of the American people.

According to the complaint, for the past 15 years, Google has engaged in anti-competitive and exclusionary practices that include acquiring or eliminating ad technology competitors. dominate digital advertising markets and force more publishers and advertisers to use its products; and hindering the ability to use competing products. In doing so, Google has strengthened its dominance with tools trusted by website publishers and online advertisers, as well as digital ad exchanges that run ad auctions.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said: “Today’s complaint alleges that Google has engaged in anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful practices to eliminate or substantially mitigate the threat of its dominance in digital advertising technologies.” “Regardless of industry or company, the Department of Justice will vigorously enforce our antitrust laws to protect consumers, preserve competition, and ensure economic fairness and opportunity for all.”

Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. “Today’s complaint alleges widespread and systematic misconduct by Google in order to consolidate market power and impede free market competition,” Monaco said. “Google has done enormous harm to online publishers and advertisers and American consumers in order to make excessive profits. The lawsuit is a milestone in the department’s efforts to hold big tech companies accountable for violating antitrust laws.

“The Department’s significant action against Google underscores our commitment to fighting the abuse of market power,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “We claim that Google has kept publishers’ revenue for its own profit and penalized publishers who sought alternatives. Those measures undermined a free and open Internet and increased advertising costs for businesses and the United States government, including our military.

“Today’s lawsuit seeks to end Google’s long-held monopoly on the digital advertising technologies that content creators use to sell ads and advertisers use to buy ads on the open Internet,” said Jonathan Cantor, Assistant Director General of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Our complaint lays out detailed allegations that explain how Google has engaged in unsustainable conduct for 15 years – and continues to do so – by driving out competitors, reducing competition, increasing advertising costs, reducing revenue for news publishers and content creators, and stifling innovation and the exchange of information and ideas in the public arena. He delivers.

Google now controls the digital tool that almost every major website publisher uses to sell ads on their website (the publisher ad server). It controls the leading advertising tool that helps millions of large and small advertisers buy ad inventory (Advertiser Ad Network). And it oversees the largest ad exchange, a technology that runs real-time auctions to match online ad buyers and sellers.

Google’s anti-competitive behavior includes:

• Finding competitors; Participating in a buying pattern to gain control over key digital advertising tools used by website publishers to sell ad space;
• Forced adoption of Google tools: Locking website publishers into newly purchased devices by limiting the unique advertiser interest to the ad exchange and enabling real-time access to the ad exchange on the publisher’s ad server usage.
• Distorted Bidding: restrict live bidding on publisher inventory by the ad exchange, and restrict the ability of competing ad exchanges to compete on the same terms as the Google ad exchange; And
• Bid rigging Activating bidding mechanics on many of its products to keep Google out of competition, destabilize its rivals, and stop the development of competing technologies.

With its illegal monopoly and its own estimates, Google pockets an average of more than 30% of the advertising dollars flowing through its digital ad technology products. For some transactions and for certain publishers and advertisers, it takes much more. Google’s anti-competitive behavior has stifled alternative technologies, hindering their adoption by publishers, advertisers and rivals.

The Sherman Act demonstrates America’s enduring commitment to competition and economic freedom. For more than a century, the department has enforced antitrust laws against illegal monopolies to disrupt markets and restore competition. To correct Google’s anti-competitive behavior, the Department seeks both equitable relief on behalf of the American public and treble damages for damages to federal government agencies that overpaid for Web advertising. This enforcement action marks the first antitrust case in half a century in which the department has sought damages for civil antitrust violations.

In the year In 2020, the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust suit against Google for its monopoly on search and search advertising, which in today’s lawsuit are separate markets from digital ad technology markets. The Google Search lawsuit is scheduled for trial in September 2023.

Google is a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of Delaware and headquartered in Mountain View, California. Google’s global network business is expected to generate revenue of approximately $31.7 billion by 2021. Google by Alfabet Inc. It is owned and incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.