Priyanka Tiwari
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Suspense crime, Digital Desk : The escalation of the antitrust dispute with Google is becoming more complicated, as the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a petition requesting that it force divestiture of two of Alphabet’s core digital advertising business units. This comes after a federal ruling that Google exercised a monopoly on certain segments of the online advertising industry through anti-competitive practices.
DOJ Proposes Additional Measures Against Google
Filed Request: On March 29, the DOJ filled a motion for preliminary relief requesting Judge Brinkema to compel Alphabet Inc. to divest the following key assets:
Ad Exchange: Google’s real-time bidding advertising exchange.
Publisher Ad Server: The ad serving system used by sites that host advertisements.
Also, the DOJ requested that the defendants be required to share competitive bidding data with other market players in real-time in order to foster competition.
The trial date for the case examining these proposed remedies is set for September 22, Virginia.
Judge deciphers deliberate exploitation of the market
Brinkema concluded based on the evidence presented that Google has and continues to implement anti-competitive policies that dominate the digital advertising industry by tightly controlling the integration of the core advert exchange with the publisher server advertising command interface, thereby foreclosing access to competition and price increasing the cross subsidization for the proprietary services.
In her ruling, she dismissed the rest of the claims alleging unfair dominance of advertiser ad networks, granting partial relief to the DOJ.
Google’s Response: Combatively Defensive.
Once again, Alphabet defends itself. As Google’s head of Public Policy Regulation, Lee-Anne Mulolland was quoted stating, The DoJ’s additional proposals… go well beyond the court’s findings, have no basis in law and would harm publishers and advertisers.”
In its defense, Google claimed that there is strong competition in the form of Meta, Amazon, and TikTok, as well as in advertising, and maintained that its practices are useful for both consumers and advertisers.
Other Legal Issues, Beyond Advertising.
This is the third major antitrust defeat facing Alphabet in under two years. Other challenges posed by the DOJ include:
Allegations of Search Monopolies:
Google is said to have paid Apple in excess of $20 billion each year to keep sponsoring them as the default search engine on iPhones.
DOJ has suggested divesting Chrome along with sharing competitive data and selling access to search inquiries.
Sundar Pichai has designated these suggestions 'extraordinary' who went on to say that it poses grave dangers of stealing private information as well as intellectual property theft.
Mobile Application Store Exploitation:
A court in San Francisco put a ruling that Google abused its Play Store market power through monopolistic practices of setting high royalty rates for access to its store and used it to stifle competitors.
Alphabet has been mandated to permit third-party app stores to Android.
Change in Antitrust Law: Addressing Constructional Change
Alphabet is suffering the consequences of having its business parts separated from the whole due to its monopolistic tendencies. Such a division shows clearly how the government’s attitude is changing towards taking an overarching approach when addressing issues within Big Tech. Rather than slap fines or order behavioral changes, these shifts attempt to recalibrate the frameworks of business empires.
If the Order of Justice succeeds in its attempts, this could become the benchmark for all subsequent accusations of monopoly formation in the technology industry.
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