DOJ confirms it wants to break up Google’s ad business

The advertising remedy trial will begin on September 22.

We sometimes think of Google as a search company, but that's merely incidental—Google is really the world's biggest advertiser. That's why the antitrust case focused on Google's ad tech business could have even more lasting effects than cases focused on search or mobile apps. The court ruled against Google last month, and now both sides are lining up to present their proposed remedies in a trial later this year.

In today's hearing, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema set the beginning of that trial for September 22 of this year. Just like the search case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is aiming to hack off pieces of Google to level the playing field. Specifically, the DOJ is asking the court to force Google to sell two parts of the ad business: the ad exchange and the publisher ad server. The ad exchange is the world's largest marketplace for bidding on advertising space. The ad server, meanwhile, is a tool that publishers use to list and sell ads on their sites.

While Google lost the liability phase of the case, it won on the subject of ad networks. The court decided that the government had not proven that Google's acquisition of ad networks like DoubleClick and Admeld had harmed competition. So, Google won't have to worry about losing those parts of the business.

The government's proposed breakup would come in phases, beginning with a requirement that Google provide real-time access to bidding data to third-party vendors. Google objects to this as it would essentially force the company to develop systems that don't currently exist and then release them as open source products. The timeline for such an effort, the company believes, makes this infeasible.

Following that move, the DOJ wants to see Google sell the aforementioned components of its advertising business. Naturally, Google opposes this as well.

"The DOJ’s additional proposals to force a divestiture of our ad tech tools go well beyond the Court’s findings, have no basis in law, and would harm publishers and advertisers," said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's VP of regulatory affairs.

In the trial, Google will paint this demand as a severe overreach, claiming that few, if any, companies would have the resources to purchase and run the products. Last year, an ad consultant estimated Google’s ad empire could be worth up to $95 billion, quite possibly too big to sell. However, Google was similarly skeptical about Chrome, and representatives from other companies have said throughout the search remedy trial that they would love to buy Google's browser.

An uphill battle

After losing three antitrust cases in just a couple of years, Google will have a hard time convincing the judge it is capable of turning over a new leaf with light remedies. A DOJ lawyer told the court Google is a "recidivist monopolist" that has a pattern of skirting its legal obligations. Still, Google is looking for mercy in the case. We expect to get more details on Google's proposed remedies as the next trial nears, but it already offered a preview in today's hearing.

Google suggests making a smaller subset of ad data available and ending the use of some pricing schemes, including unified pricing, that the court has found to be anticompetitive. Google also promised not to re-implement discontinued practices like "last look," which gave the company a chance to outbid rivals at the last moment. This was featured prominently in the DOJ's case, although Google ended the practice several years ago.

To ensure it adheres to the remedies, Google suggested a court-appointed monitor would audit the process. However, Brinkema seemed unimpressed with this proposal.

As in its other cases, Google says it plans to appeal the verdict, but before it can do that, the remedies phase has to be completed. Even if it can get the remedies paused for appeal, the decision could be a blow to investor confidence. So, Google will do whatever it can to avoid the worst-case scenario, leaning on the existence of competing advertisers like Meta and TikTok to show that the market is still competitive.

Like the search case, Google won't be facing any big developments over the summer, but this fall could be rough. Judge Amit Mehta will most likely rule on the search remedies in August, and the ad tech remedies case will begin the following month. Google also has the Play Store case hanging over its head. It lost the first round, but the company hopes to prevail on appeal when the case gets underway again, probably in late 2025.

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