DOJ Is Preparing To Sue Google Over Ad Market As Soon As September

According to Bloomberg, the Department of Justice is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, "capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market." From the report: Lawyers with the DOJ's antitrust division are questioning publishers in another round of interviews to refresh facts and glean additional details for the complaint [...]. Some of the interviews have already taken place and others are scheduled in the coming weeks [...]. They build on previous interrogations conducted during an earlier stage of the long-running investigation [...].

An ad tech complaint, which Bloomberg had reported was in the works last year, would mark the DOJ's second case against Google following the government's 2020 lawsuit alleging the tech titan dominates the online search market in violation of antitrust laws. Still undecided is whether prosecutors will file the case in federal court in Washington, where the search case is pending, or in New York, where state attorneys general have their own antitrust case related to Google's ad tech business [...].

The real question

[wakeboarder]

Is why in the flying fig did they approve all of googles acquisitions in the first place? Did they think there would be a competitive ad market? Same thing with facebook and amazon ect. I'll tell you why... lobbyists, lawyers and money. All these companies got a shoe in the door and got what they wanted, and now we all have to deal with the fallout, and as usual, the government is reacting slowly (and saying "Oh yeah why did we do that?")

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is why in the flying fig did they approve all of googles acquisitions in the first place?

So that they can come after Google later, once there is significant wealth to plunder. Duh.

Police do the same thing with drug dealers. Let them operate for a while so there is a bigger payday when they finally do take action.

Re:

[gweihir]

Yes, pretty much. Many strongly conservatives also believe that is you are poor, you did it to yourself.

Re:The real question

[ranton]

The real question is why in the flying fig did they approve all of googles acquisitions in the first place? Did they think there would be a competitive ad market?

To be fair, most of Google's influential ad market acquisitions were over 15 years ago. DoubleClick, AdMob and YouTube were all bought from 2005-2007. Google's market share of online search was 37% in 2005 (Yahoo was 30% at the time). It was a competitive market at the time, and Yahoo was engaging in billions of ad market acquisitions at the time too. Google just did a better job with their acquisitions and business strategy overall.

Allowing Facebook's acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram are far more egregious (kind of like allowing Google to buy Yahoo or MSN in 2005), but I wouldn't say allowing Google's ad market acquisitions in the early 2000's were obviously anti-competitive.

Re:

[wakeboarder]

Key words "at the time", with that many companies under thier belt it was only a matter of time before they cornered the market

Re:

[gweihir]

Indeed. Looks like regulation is completely broken in the US.

Re:

[BRTB]

More specifically, captured [wikipedia.org].

If the DoJ wins...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

...what will they do? What would actually change to address the issue? What will the situation be like in 5 or 10 years' time? Would Google just get a fine & promise to make changes that they'll tell their shareholders is a cost of doing business?

Re:

[Carewolf]

The US has traditionally split companies up that violate antitrust laws.

Re:

[ranton]

There are a number of options the federal government has at their disposal. Fining them is an option, but a very weak and ineffective one.

They could unwind acquisitions, such as forcing Google to sell Nest, Fitbit, or even YouTube. Those companies would likely be around 15-20% of Google's current market cap (almost all from YouTube).

They could force Google to sell off a certain percentage of assets. This allows the company to keep autonomy regarding which assets they keep. Perhaps give Google three years to

Why?

[msauve]

Isn't Meta/Facebook's high valuation based on their own in-house advertising revenue? Twitter? DuckDuckGo gets revenue from Microsoft Advertising. Aren't all the eBay and Amazon third party sellers essentially paying for advertising and fulfillment? Does advertising on /. run through Google? Does Google somehow prevent anyone from creating a website with all the advertising they desire on it? Do all those cable TV/streaming service ads run through Google? Roadside billboards (lots of those are "digital" these days)?

Re:Why?

[ranton]

This lawsuit is a bit shakier than their 2020 lawsuit focused on online search. Google owns over 90% of the online search market, but only a third of the online ad market. Google is still the largest player in both though.

A company with 30% market share, whose closest competitor has 20% (Facebook), isn't what most people think of as an anti-competitive monopoly. Standard Oil, for instance, had 70% market share when the case which broke it up was filed.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

This lawsuit is a bit shakier than their 2020 lawsuit focused on online search. Google owns over 90% of the online search market, but only a third of the online ad market. Google is still the largest player in both though.

A company with 30% market share, whose closest competitor has 20% (Facebook), isn't what most people think of as an anti-competitive monopoly. Standard Oil, for instance, had 70% market share when the case which broke it up was filed.

Could also be for mobile advertising market - in which c