According to the ruling, issued by U.S. district judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia, the company operates two illegal monopolies in the adtech industry—one in the market for publisher ad servers and one in ad exchanges, used to facilitate transactions between media buyers and sellers.
Google “willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts,” which has resulted in an unlawful consolidation of power, Brinkema wrote in her decision. “For over a decade,” she went on, “Google has tied its publisher ad server and ad exchange together through contractual policies and technological integration, which enabled the company to establish and protect its monopoly power in these two markets.”
The court found that, from 2018 to 2022, Google held about 91% of the global publisher ad server market for open-web display ads.
