What you need to know
- After being deemed a monopolist in search, Google is back in the corridors fighting a new antitrust case — this time targeting its dominance in digital advertising.
- The US DOJ and 17 states have filed an antitrust case against Google, citing anticompetitive business practices and unlawful behavior.
- Experts and analysts predict that the Justice Department may face issues establishing a legal ground for the case while referring to ad business as “complex.”
It’s been over a month since Google’s search engine was deemed a monopoly in an antitrust ruling. And now, the tech giant is back in court fighting a separate antitrust case that could potentially change its entire advertising business.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 17 states claim that Google has leveraged its dominance to monopolize digital advertising, leaving competitors with the shorter end of the stick in the category. According to the DOJ, “Google has caused great harm to online publishers and advertisers and American consumers.”
The antitrust case is slated to begin this Monday. The DOJ will attempt to demonstrate Google’s ‘illegal’ monopoly in advertising. For context, Google generated approximately $200 billion in ad revenue.
Google has cited the effectiveness of its services as the secret ingredient to its immense success in the category. “No one is forced to use our advertising technologies – they choose to use them because they’re effective,” Google added.
Google has bigger fish to fry beyond the monopolist antitrust ruling
While it’s still early to determine the case’s outcome, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) claims Google is abusing its dominance to gain the edge and competitive advantage over its competitors. The regulator claims that the tech giant leverages anti-competitive business practices and unlawful behavior to assert its dominance in the ad business.
Speaking to BBC, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt University Law School claims it might be an uphill task to establish a legal ground to base its case. The advertising business is “so complex that I think that’s going to be a real challenge for the government to make a clear, simple monopolization argument here.”
While commenting on the issue, a Google spokesman referred to the antitrust case targeting its ad business as a flawed understanding of the ad sector. Last year, Google highlighted the exponential growth in the ad business with endless opportunities for its competitors while citing Apple, Amazon, and TikTok’s recent success in the category.
Elsewhere, as regulators reign down on Google’s anti-competitive business practices, the company faces greater challenges from fast-rising competitors in search, especially OpenAI’s temporary prototype search tool – SearchGPT.
