Justice declares illegal part of its advertising business

Google’s position as One of the most powerful actors on the Internet begins to crack under the pressure of the courts. The last setback for the Mountain View company has arrived with a defeat in the trial for advertising monopoly promoted by the United States Department of Justice.

In a resolution signed this Thursdayfederal judge Leonie Brinkema has concluded that Google incurred anti -competitive practices in two key markets: that of advertisement servers for editorial groups (where she dominates with DFP) and the advertising exchanges of the Open Web (through ADX).

Ads servers, such as DFP, owned by Google, are technical infrastructure that use many digital media to manage What ads are shown, when and who already. They are not the only market option, but one of the most widespread, especially among large editors. In practice, they act as the digital advertising command center.

The second front is that of the advertising exchanges of the Open Web, the open environment where different actors, such as advertisers, agencies or media, bid in real time for advertising spaces. This ecosystem coexists with other alternatives, such as platforms controlled by Facebook or Amazon, but remains a key piece of the programmatic market.

Adx, Google’s solution, is one of the main actors in this segment. According to the court, the company combined both products illegally For more than a decade, forcing editors to use all their technology if they wanted to access those auctions. That integration reduced the alternatives of the rest of the actors and left Google with the absolute control of the process.

The question now is how to dismantle monopoly

Brinkema considers that this strategy not only eliminated rivals, but also harmed the media, who saw their advertising income reduced, and advertisers, who ended up paying more. The sentence argues that any benefit derived from this integration is widely exceeded by the damage caused to the competition.

From here a new stage opens. The judge has asked the parties to present a calendar to study the so -called “structural remedies”, that is, the possible measures that could be imposed following this ruling. Among the options that consider the Department of Justice is the forced separation of DFP and ADX as independent companieswhich would mean the heart of the Google programmatic advertising business.

The sentence does not order that division at the moment, but the possibility is on the table. What happens in this phase can mark a before and after how digital advertising is managed.

This part of the business meant about 30.4 billion dollars in revenues in 2024, approximately 9 % of the group’s global billing. Although the judicial decision does not affect other Google advertising services such as search advertisements, YouTube videos or Google Maps advertising, it does question the architecture on which its advertising strategy is supported in the open web environment, where until now it worked as a player who dominated all the pieces of the board.

During the trial, the Court listened to media editors such as Use Today or the Daily Mailto advertising agencies, to rival technology companies already executives of Google herself, including the head of YouTube. All contributed information about how the Mountain View giant was closing the passage to other advertising solutions through internal decisions, conditioned contracts and technological changes designed to benefit only their own tools.

The Department of Justice also denounced that Google eliminated internal conversations that could serve as proof and abused legal privilege to hide information. Although the judge has not yet resolved if he will impose sanctions for it, it makes clear in her letter that the responsibility for monopoly has already been accredited.

This case adds to other open fronts against the company. In 2024, another federal court had already declared that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in the searches market, a process that also remains open waiting for possible corrective measures to be decided. In addition, the company has been sued in other states for the control of its application store, while the United States Government has also brought Apple, Amazon and Meta in parallel causes.

Together, this new ruling against Google reinforces an idea that a few years ago seemed unthinkable: the era of technological impunity is coming to an end. For the first time in decades, the big digital platforms face not only investigations, but to firm convictions that could change the way they operate on the Internet.

Images: Greg Bulla | Rubaitul Azad

Images | The United States has tired of the monopolies of great technological ones. And wants to start “chop them” with goal