Google monopolized online advertising and the remedy is a code of conduct.
Seventeen months of post-verdict wrangling brought the industry to this point. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled the online ad behemoth had indeed come by its dominance illegally last April. Then came the remedies trial, testimonies from 26 witnesses, briefs from both sides, a two-page order this September that rejected breaking Google up, and finally the full opinion this week spelling out what Google actually has to do. All of it traces back to a complaint the Department of Justice and 17 states filed three and a half years ago.
At the heart of it was a concern that Google controlled both sides of the pipe ad money flows through, the tool publishers use to sell their ad space and the marketplace where those ads are actually bought, and used that control to rig the game in its own favor. Advertisers and publishers couldn’t avoid Google even if they wanted to, and Google steered the money toward itself at their expense.
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