The Ministry of Justice presented its roadmap on Friday to break Google advertising technology empireWho would be the second request to force the sale of parts of his activities within one year.
Government comments came at a hearing convened by Judge Leonie Mr. Brinkema of the American district court for the Oriental District of Virginia, which governed last month That Google had a monopoly on certain parts of a sprawling system that puts ads on websites. She must now decide what measures, known as remedies, she should take to resolve her concerns.
A lawyer for the Ministry of Justice said that the government expected to ask the court to force Google to sell the tools used by online publishers to sell advertising space, as well as the technology that connects publishers to advertisers who seek to buy space. In The original trialThe government had asked the court to force Google to sell the advertising technology it had acquired over the years.
Leaving Google with “90% of the publishers who are indebted to them are frankly too dangerous,” said Julia Tarver Wood, the government’s main lawyer in the case.
Google lawyers have said that a break would not align with the previous legal precedent and jeopardize confidentiality and security protections.
The request of the Ministry of Justice is the last legal blow to Google, which is also in the midst of a second hearing on how to remedy its Monopoly on research In a federal court in Washington. In this case, the government asked a judge to force the company to sell their popular browser, Chrome, as well as other measures.
Combined, the two government requests – if granted – would most likely represent the largest Rethaping of a powerful business By the federal government since the 1980s, when AT&T was divided into several companies within the framework of an antitrust regulation with the Ministry of Justice.
It remains to be seen if the judges will force a rupture, Viewed among antitrust experts as the most extreme solution.
In the Ad Tech case, which was deposited in 2023, government lawyers argued that Google had dominated the mainly invisible technology that disseminates ads to websites on the Internet. This system executes an auction for the advertising space opened on a website, such as a news editor, in real time while the page is responsible.
The government has argued that Google had illegally monopolized three parts of this system: tools used by websites to publish their open advertising space, the tools used by advertisers to buy it and the software that connected both sides of each transaction.
Judge Brinkema ruled last month that Google had violated the law to protect its monopoly on the publisher’s tools and the software that connects buyers to sellers of advertising space, known as an advertising exchange. The government has not proven that Google was a monopoly regarding the tools used by advertisers, she added.
At the hearing on Friday, judge Brinkema said that she would convene an hearing to determine the appeals in September.
To resolve his concerns, said the Ministry of Justice, he plans to ask the judge to force Google to sell his exchange of announcements, which facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers of the advertising space.
The government will also request the breakdown of the advertising tools of the Google publisher by turning part of them which manages auction for the advertising space, which makes its underlying coding open to the public. Later, the government wants Google to sell the tools that manage other functions for publishers, such as holding files.
Google’s main lawyer Karen Dunn said the plan would not respect the previous legal. Even if the court was seriously considering breaking the activities of Google’s advertising technology, the government’s proposal would be difficult, she added.
Few buyers would exist for technology, and those who could afford are “huge technological companies”, added Ms. Dunn. In addition, important security and confidentiality protections provided by Google would disappear.
“It is most likely completely impossible, what they are talking about,” without causing serious problems, “she said.
Google rather proposed that the court demands that the company changes or abandoned some of the practices that the government has declared that it is used to cement its power, and said that it would take measures to open its auction auction system in a way that would benefit publishers.