US Antitrust Trial Targets Google’s Grip on Digital Advertising

Google is back in court as a landmark antitrust trial opens in Washington, D.C., over its dominance of the digital advertising market. The case marks the second major test this year for the California-based tech giant after a judge recently rejected government calls to split off its Chrome browser.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argues that Google holds an illegal monopoly over the ad tech “stack” — the systems that publishers use to sell ads and advertisers use to buy them. Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema earlier ruled in favor of the DOJ, setting the stage for this week’s hearings to determine what remedies should be imposed.

Prosecutors want Google to spin off its ad publisher and exchange operations and to be barred from running an ad exchange for 10 years. Google counters that such demands are technically unfeasible, go beyond the court’s findings, and would harm competition and small businesses.

“We’ve said from the start that DOJ’s case misunderstands how digital advertising works and ignores how the landscape has dramatically evolved, with increasing competition and new entrants,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs.

The trial comes weeks after the European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.47 billion) over similar ad tech dominance, though Brussels opted for behavioral remedies rather than breakups — a move critics said was too soft.

The remedy phase in the U.S. case is expected to last about a week, with closing arguments set in the coming weeks. Judge Brinkema has said she will weigh lessons from the recent search monopoly case, in which Google avoided a breakup but was ordered to share data with rivals.

The proceedings form part of a wider bipartisan push against Big Tech, with at least five ongoing antitrust cases targeting the industry’s largest firms.