Category: In the News

The remedies phase of the Justice Department versus Google has pretty much concluded, and it’s not too much of a melodramatic statement to note how the fate of the display advertising industry will be decided in the next couple of weeks.

Judge Leonie Brinkema has already found Google guilty of antitrust violations in two key markets: the open-web display publisher ad server (DoubleClick For Publishers) and display ad exchange (AdX) markets. She also determined that Google unlawfully tied those tools together. That means the remedies aren’t an academic exercise: the court must now fashion a practical fix.

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The latest chapter in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google’s ad tech empire wrapped on Friday (Oct. 3). Over the past two weeks, both sides — the DOJ and Google — laid out their competing visions for how to dismantle a business that, for years, set the rules for the game while playing all positions.

Unfortunately, Digiday wasn’t in the courtroom (we’ve got day jobs) but we’ve been trading notes with people who were. Below is a breakdown of what really happened, what matters and what to keep an eye on as the case barrels toward resolution.

The TL;DR

The DOJ and Google spent 10 (and a half) days arguing over how to fix the tech platform’s illegal monopolization of how online ads are bought and sold as well as the marketplace where it all takes place. Think of this as the penalty phase — not to decide if Google is guilty of the things publishers and ad execs spent years accusing it of, but what the punishment should be. Does Judge Leonie Brinkema force Google to divest the tech that facilitates that control, or are behavioral constraints enough?

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