For two weeks, the Justice Department and Google have questioned more than two dozen witnesses to try to sway a federal judge’s decision over how to address the company’s illegal monopoly in advertising software.
On Monday, that hearing concluded in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. To fix the monopoly, the government proposed aggressive measures that include forcing Google to sell its system that connects buyers and sellers of advertising space. Google argued that smaller changes to its business practices would be more appropriate.
Both sides will offer closing arguments in November. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who is presiding over the case, is expected to reach a decision in the coming months. Her ruling could have significant implications for Google’s business.
Here’s what to know about what each side argued at the hearing.
What case does the hearing stem from?
In April, Judge Brinkema ruled that Google had broken antitrust law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web.
The Justice Department argued that Google had a monopoly over three parts of the online advertising market: the tools used by online publishers, like news sites, to host open ad space; the tools advertisers use to buy that ad space; and the software that enables those transactions.
Judge Brinkema ruled in the government’s favor in two of those, finding that Google illegally built a monopoly over the publisher tools and the transaction software system. She dismissed the third, the tools used by advertisers.
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The post U.S. v. Google: What Each Side Argued for Fixing Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly appeared first on New York Times.
