"Google has spent a decade sharpening its "weapons" in an industry that helps sustain large swaths of the open internet, the Justice Department argued before a federal judge Monday. After years of operating an illegal monopoly in two ad tech markets and unlawfully tying its products together, nothing short of a break up will suffice to overcome Google's "massive head start" over rivals, it claims."
"DOJ attorney Julia Tarver Wood began her opening arguments in the remedies trial for the US v. Google ad tech case by quoting Winston Churchill's warning that "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The government argued that unless Judge Leonie Brinkema breaks Google up, the company will almost certainly find a way to recreate its unfair advantages that have left publishers feeling they have no choice but to use its products, even when they degrade in quality."
The Department of Justice contends that Google established and entrenched an unlawful ad tech monopoly by tying products and leveraging a decade-long advantage. The government claims those entrenched advantages coerce publishers into using Google's services even as quality declines and that structural remedies are required to prevent reconstitution of dominance. The DOJ presented divestiture as the sole effective remedy to dismantle interlocking ad tech operations and remove incentives to recreate unfair advantages. Google counters that the proposed breakup is radical, reckless, and unnecessary. The remedies trial will determine whether behavioral changes or divestiture best restore competition.
Read at The Verge
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