The CEO of Google, Sussian Pichai, testifies to the Judicial Committee of the Chamber in the Rayburn Chamber Office building on December 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty images
Google Antimonopoly problems continue to increase, as well as the company tries to prepare for a future dominated by artificial intelligence.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Google Hero illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to their position between advertising buyers and vendors.
The ruling, which followed a September trial in Alexandria, Virginia, represents a second great antimonopoly coup for Google in less than a year. In August, a judge determined that the company has maintained the monopoly in its main internet search market, the most significant antitrust failure in the technology industry since the case against Microsoft More than 20 years ago.
Google is in a particularly precarious place, since he tries to simultaneously defend his main business in court while defending an avalanche of a new competition due to the emergence of the generative AI, it must be the OpenAi chatgpt, which sacrifices users to search for information. The income growth has cooled in recent years, and Google now also faces the additional potential of a slowdown in advertising expenditure due to the economic conerns of the new rates of President Donald Trump.
The Alphabet parent company reports the results of the first quarter next week. The price of Alphabet’s shares fell more than 1% on Thursday and has now dropped 20% this year.
In the ruling on Thursday, the United States District Judge, Leonie Brinkema, said Google’s anti -competition practices “damaged” editors and users on the web. The trial had 39 witnesses live, statements of 20 additional witnesses and hundreds of exhibitions.
Judge Brinkema ruled that Google illegally controls two of the three parts of the advertising technology market: the editor advertisement server market and the announcement exchanges market. Brinkema dismissed the third part of the case, determining that the tools used for general advertising cannot be clearly defined as Google’s own market. In particular, the judge cited the purchases of Doubleck and Admeld and said that the government did not show those “acquisitions were anti -petites.”
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president or regulatory issues of Google, in a statement sent by email. “We do not agree with the Court’s decision regarding our editor tools. Editors have many options and choose Google because advertising technology tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release from the Department of Justice that the ruling repeats a “historical victory in the current fight to prevent Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
Possible advertising interruption
If regulators force the company to disintert parts of the advertising technology business, as requested by the Department of Justice, it could open opportunities for smaller players and other competitors to fill the void and obtain a valuable market share. Amazon His advertising business has been growing in recent years.
Meanwhile, Google is still defending against the claims that his search has acted as a monopoly when creating strong entry barriers and a feedback cycle that maintained his domain. Google said in August, immediately after the decision of the search case, which would appeal, which means that the matter can be developed in court for years even after the resources are determined.
The Remedios test, which will establish the consequences, begins next week. The Department of Justice points to a rupture of the Chrome of Google browser and eliminates the exclusive agreements, such as its agreement with Apple To search on iPhones. The judge is expected to make the decision in August.
The CEO of Google, Sussian Pichai (L) and the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook (R) listen while the president of the United States, Joe Biden, speaks a round table with American and Indian business leaders in the east room of the White House on June 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty images
After Thursday’s advertising market decision, Andrew Frank de Gartner said that Google’s “conflicts of interest” are evident for how the market works.
“The structure has been decades in creation,” Frank said, adding that “unraveling that would be a significant challenge, partly because lawyers do not tend to be architects of the system.”
However, the uncertainty that comes with a potentially one -year appeal process means that many editors and advertisers will be waiting to see how things are shaken before making great decisions given how much they depend on Google technology.
“Google will have incentives to promote more possible competition by losing certain restrictions in certain media that it controls, one of the issues being YouTube,” Frank said. “Those children or incentives can create opportunities for other publishers or advertising technology players.”
A date for the remedy test has a set of bones.
Damian Rollison, senior director of the Marketing Platform for the Soci Marketing Platform, said that the income affected by the case of the advertising market could be more dramatic than the impact of the search case.
“The company can lose much more in material terms if its advertising business, for a long time its main source of income, breaks Rollison in an email. “While divisions like Chrome are more strategically important.”
Look: The US Judge finds that Google has illegal online advertising technology monopolies
