The ruling could allow prosecutors to argue for a breakup of Google’s advertising products. The U.S. Department of Justice has said that Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
Alphabet’s Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a federal judge said on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech titan in an antitrust case brought by the U.S.U.S.
District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that Google unlawfully monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. Antitrust enforcers failed to show the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.
The ruling could allow prosecutors to argue for a breakup of Google’s advertising products. The U.S. Department of Justice has said that Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
Google will now face the possibility of two different U.S. courts ordering it to sell assets or change its business practices. A judge in Washington will hold a trial next week on the DOJ’s request to make Google sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to end its dominance in online search.
Google has previously explored selling off its ad exchange to appease European antitrust regulators, Reuters reported in September.
Brinkema oversaw a three-week trial last year on claims brought by the DOJ and a coalition of states.
Google used classic monopoly-building tactics of eliminating competitors through acquisitions, locking customers in to using its products, and controlling how transactions occurred in the online ad market, prosecutors said at trial.
Google argued the case focused on the past, when the company was still working on making its tools able to connect to competitors’ products. Prosecutors also ignored competition from technology companies including Amazon.com and Comcast as digital ad spending shifted to apps and streaming video, Google’s lawyer said.
Earlier, Google was sued in Britain for potential damages of up to 5 billion pounds ($6.6 billion) in a class action alleging the company abused its dominant market position in the online search industry.
The class action, filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Tuesday, argues that Google’s actions enabled it to charge higher prices for the advertisements that appear in search inquiries than it otherwise could in a competitive market.
It said the U.S. tech giant contracted phone makers to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser on Android devices and paid Apple to make it the default search engine on iPhones, with the intention of shutting out competition.
The claim, filed by competition law expert Or Brook on behalf of thousands of businesses, alleges Google ensured its search engine had better functionality and more features for Google’s own advertising offering than that of its competitors.
Google said this was “yet another speculative and opportunistic case.”
“We will argue against it vigorously,” a spokesperson said. “Consumers and advertisers use Google because it is helpful, not because there are no alternatives.”
Brook said businesses had almost no choice but to use Google ads to advertise their products and services.
“Regulators around the world have described Google as a monopoly and securing a spot on Google’s top pages is essential for visibility,” she said in a statement.
“Google has been leveraging its dominance in the general search and search advertising market to overcharge advertisers.”
Britain’s antitrust regulator launched an investigation into Google’s search services, including their impact on advertising markets, in January.
The Competition and Markets Authority said at the time that millions of people and businesses relied on Google’s services, which accounted for 90% of searches and were used by more than 200,000 UK businesses to advertise.