Google will seek to avoid a forced sale of part of its online advertising business as it goes through an antitrust trial. The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states are seeking to make Google sell its ad exchange, AdX, where online publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. The government also seeks to require Google to make the mechanism that decides the winner of those auctions open source.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that Google holds unlawful monopolies in web advertising technology. Google and the Justice Department will spend the next two weeks in court presenting evidence in a “remedy” trial that will culminate in Brinkema issuing a ruling on how to restore fair market conditions.
“The purpose of a remedy is doing what is necessary to restore competition,” said Julia Tarver Wood in an opening statement for the DOJ’s antitrust division. Wood said that Google is manipulating the market in a way antithetical to free market competition.
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“The means to cheat are buried in computer codes and algorithms,” Wood said. Karen Dunn, an attorney for Google said the remedy proposed by the government is reckless and radical, and that the DOJ is attempting to remove Google entirely from the competition.
Google says it will appeal the earlier decision labeling the ad network as a monopoly, regardless of what the judge rules.
Google had previously offered to sell AdX, according to Reuters. Instead of selling AdX, Google has now proposed changing its policies to make it easier for publishers to use and support competing platforms. However, the DOJ has said such requirements alone are not adequate to restore competition.
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Google recently won a separate antitrust trial, which spared it from a forced breakup or divestiture from Chrome. In the case, DOJ argued that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by securing default status on devices and browsers through exclusive contracts, making it nearly impossible for rivals to compete. The trial concluded with Google being barred from entering exclusive search distribution contracts on platforms such as Chrome, Android, and the Gemini app, however, the company was spared the more severe remedies earlier suggested by the DOJ.
Google is not the only company that has been going through an antitrust trial of late. Meta recently went through a similar trial, with the FTC arguing that it used a “buy or bury” strategy to neutralize competitive threats and maintain monopoly power in the social media space.