The legal case concerns a system of software that is used by advertisers to place ads on websites around the internet. Aaron Teitelbaum, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the company had linked its products together in a way that made it hard for publishers and advertisers to use alternatives.
“Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist,” he said. “These are the markets that make the free and open internet possible.”
Google’s lead lawyer, Karen Dunn, countered that the government had failed to offer the evidence to prove its case and was on shaky legal ground.
“Google’s conduct is a story of innovation in response to competition,” she said.
The arguments conclude US et al. v. Google, an antitrust suit that the Justice Department and eight states filed against Google last year. (More states have joined the suit since then.) The agency and states accused the internet giant of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law, in part through the acquisition of the advertising software company Doubleclick in 2008. Brinkema will decide the merits of the case in the coming months.
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The penalties could be severe. Last week, the Justice Department asked the judge in that case to break Google up by forcing it to sell Chrome, the most popular web browser in the world. Google has until Dec. 20 to respond with its own suggestions on how to fix its search monopoly. The ad-technology case could deliver a new blow to Google. The government has preemptively called for a breakup of the company’s ad-tech business, which generated $31 billion in revenue last year, or about a tenth of overall revenue. If Brinkema decides the company has illegally subverted competition in the ad-technology market, she could force Google to spin off the technology and place other restrictions on its business.
