Google fights back against U.S. court after being ruled “anticompetitive” monopoly
Google has once again been ruled a monopoly, with a U.S. court saying they’ve “willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts.” However, Google still plans to appeal the decision.
The case was heard in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia, with Judge Leonie Brinkema hearing the case. 17 plaintiffs filed a joint suit against Google alleging that they were engaging in antitrust actions, which essentially means an organization is purposely reducing competition and monopolizing an industry.
Though Google was found innocent of monopolizing certain advertising markets through the way that they acquire users, the dual-pronged suit’s second part didn’t fail. They also alleged the tech giant was purposely pushing ads for their own products and services on servers that were meant to be part of a free market.
As a result, it’s been determined that Google violated U.S. antitrust laws and have been engaging in antitrust activity – though they haven’t taken this decision sitting down.
“Google has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market, and has unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX) in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.”
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For reference, theSherman Actis a set of antitrust laws put in place to ensure markets stay open and competitive, allowing for anyone to theoretically succeed in an open marketplace. Here are the parts of Section 1 and 2 Google was ruled to be violating:
The entire document is very legally dense, but the gist of what this means is that Google directly tied their own first-party ad server to web advertising tools that were supposed to be open and competitive. This could result in Google-preferred ads being prioritized over other companies who paid for those slots, thus violating both sections of the law in this ruling.
According to the FTC’s official site, violations of the Sherman Act can come with penalties of up to $100 million dollars for a corporation… which is part of the reason why Google is actively trying to appeal this verdict.
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective,” saidGoogle Regulatory Affairs VP Lee-Anne Mulholland.
However, if this appeal doesn’t end up going through, there will be another hearing to argue how Google should remedy the issue if they’re found liable and how much they’ll have to pay out in penalties.
This isn’t the only legal battle Google has had to fight, as they’ve been in and out of court with Epic Games over the wayPlay Store monetization works.
