{"id":149528,"date":"2025-09-20T15:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T15:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/149528\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T15:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T15:55:09","slug":"the-us-government-is-taking-a-second-stab-at-breaking-up-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/149528\/","title":{"rendered":"The US government is taking a second stab at breaking up Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting Monday, the US government will get another crack at convincing a federal judge to break up Google, after a different judge decided to keep it intact<\/a> despite finding it to be a monopolist.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Google and the Justice Department will return to a federal courthouse in Alexandria, VA for a roughly two-week trial about how to restore competition to the advertising technology markets that Google illegally monopolized<\/a>. It comes just weeks after DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta \u2014 who issued a historic ruling deeming Google a monopoly<\/a> in online search \u2014 delivered his prescription for restoring competition to the online search market. Mehta\u2019s ruling stopped far short of the government\u2019s major asks to remedy Google\u2019s harm, including denying a requested sale of Google\u2019s Chrome browser, and letting the company keep paying for prime distribution on spots on browsers and phones.<\/p>\n

Eastern District of Virginia Judge Leonie Brinkema \u2014 who also ruled Google to be a monopolist in two advertising technology markets \u2014 is not bound to Mehta\u2019s decision. But she\u2019s undoubtedly paid attention to it. Still, there\u2019s reason for the DOJ to believe it could get a different outcome in the ad tech case when it comes to its request to break up Google.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s reason for the DOJ to believe it could get a different outcome in the ad tech case<\/p>\n

Unlike in the search case, the part of Google\u2019s business that the government is asking Brinkema to force it to divest was a central product at issue in the trial. The DOJ is asking the judge to require Google to sell its AdX exchange, which facilitates digital transactions for display ads that appear at the top or side of many websites. Brinkema found that Google illegally tied AdX to its publisher ad server, Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP), which is used by websites to sell their ad inventory \u2014 so it\u2019s plausible she could find it reasonable to separate one from Google altogether. The government also wants Google to open source the auction logic behind DFP, and if that doesn\u2019t adequately restore competition, it wants the judge to reserve the right to force Google to sell that product, too.<\/p>\n

Google, on the other hand, suggests the issues Brinkema found with its dealings can be fixed with a few behavioral tweaks, and characterizes the DOJ\u2019s proposals<\/a> as an effort to unwind acquisitions that the judge didn\u2019t find to be anticompetitive in and of themselves. Google proposed letting third-party publisher ad servers access real-time bids in AdX \u2014 something that the government argued Google only offers to DFP, unfairly disadvantaging rivals and effectively coercing publishers to stick with Google-run platforms<\/a>. It also says it could allow publishers to export their data without charge, and commit to getting rid of a restriction on how publishers can price their ad inventory<\/a> known as unified pricing rules. Google could also refrain from using auction tactics like First Look and Last Look in its ad products, which the DOJ had argued unfairly gave Google a leg up.<\/p>\n

Like every antitrust trial, there\u2019s still a long road ahead. Google must wait for a remedies ruling before it can appeal the underlying monopoly finding, meaning that even if Brinkema orders a breakup, it could be years until it\u2019s implemented. But how far she\u2019s willing to go will say a lot about the justice system\u2019s willingness to break up Big Tech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starting Monday, the US government will get another crack at convincing a federal judge to break up Google,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3091,11032,84,59,844,305,1058,227,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-149528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-analysis","tag-antitrust","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-google","tag-policy","tag-report","tag-tech","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}