TECH: Google, already facing the potential dissolution of the company over its ubiquitous search engine, is struggling to fend off another attack by the US Justice Department accusing it of monopolistic conduct, this time Regarding the technology that brings online advertising to consumers. The Justice Department and Google are scheduled to deliver closing arguments on Monday in a lawsuit that accuses Google of an illegal monopoly over its ad technology. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, will decide the case and is expected to issue a written decision by the end of the year.
If Brinkema finds Google to have engaged in illegal, monopolistic conduct, she will hold further hearings to determine what measures should be imposed. The Justice Department, along with a coalition of states, has already said it believes Google should be forced to sell its ad tech business, which generates tens of billions of dollars annually for the Mountain View, California-based company. After nearly a month of hearings earlier this year, the arguments in the case remained the same. The Justice Department argues that Google created and maintained a monopoly in “open-web display ads”, which are essentially rectangular ads that appear at the top and right side of the page when browsing a website. Google dominates all aspects of the marketplace: a technology called “doubleclick” is widely used by news sites and other online publishers, while “Google Ads” keeps a cache of advertisers large and small that are right in front of the consumer. Want to place your ads on the right webpage.
In between is another Google product, AdExchange, which conducts almost instantaneous auctions matching advertisers with publishers. In court papers, Justice Department lawyers say Google is “more concerned with securing and preserving the triangle of its monopoly than serving its publisher and advertiser customers or winning on the merits.” As a result, content providers and news organizations have never been able to generate online revenue because Google charges excessive fees for transactions between advertisers and publishers, the government says. Google argues that the government's case unfairly focuses on a narrow area of online advertising. If one looks more broadly at online advertising, including social media, streaming TV services and app-based advertising, Google says it controls only 25 percent of the market, a share that continues to decline. Because it is facing increasing and evolving competition.
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