Opening statements before District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia start later today. The BBC notes that the Justice Department plans to argue that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, illegally operates a monopoly in the online advertising market. However, Alphabet denies the allegations, claiming that its success is due to the “effectiveness” of its services.
The Justice Department claims Google established its monopoly through the anti-competitive acquisitions of smaller ad-tech rivals and even bullying website publishers into using its ad products. Google is also said to have unethically controlled key businesses in each part of the advertising supply chain, thereby driving up ad rates for advertisers while reducing the payouts to website owners.
Pointing out Google’s systematic abuse of the online ad business, the DoJ will ask the court to break up the company’s ad-tech monopoly. The agency believes a breakup would create new opportunities for Google’s smaller competitors and incentivize new players to enter the market. It will also be better for both advertisers and publishers.
Google is worth a hell of a lot more than 31 billion dollars.
Uh, yeah. Why wasn’t this filed years ago when they started copying website content to their own AMP version of the site and not even routing users to the actual site they expected to see? Google has been trying to acquire the entire Internet, cutting the people who built it, and maintain it, completely out of the picture, ever since they changed their motto.
This. Much of the incentives to create and maintain quality content on distinct sites has been destroyed through this process of enshitification.