Google Fights Ad Tech Spinoff in Antitrust Battle

By Jody Godoy

(Romero.my.id) -Alphabet's Google on Friday will urge a judge to avoid breaking up its advertising technology business as part of an effort to end its control of tools vital to selling ads on the internet.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema from Alexandria, Virginia, is conducting a hearing aimed at gaining an overall understanding of possible solutions to reinstate competition in the market for technologies used by website publishers to sell advertisements. Following this initial session, she plans to set up additional hearings to determine particular actions.

Google aims to prevent a situation similar to the ongoing case in Washington, where a judge is contemplating the Department of Justice’s proposal to force Google to divest itself of the Chrome web browser as a means to tackle the company’s dominance in online searches.

The firm aims to prevent reaching such a conclusion in the advertising technology case by persuading Brinkema that a compulsory divestiture is not considered a legal choice.

Google has stated that it would be unsuitable for the company to sell tools designed for purposes beyond merely selling website advertisements.

The Department of Justice has informed Brinkema that Google must divest itself of at least Google Ad Manager, encompassing the firm's publisher ad server and ad exchange.

Ad server platforms for publishers serve as repositories where websites keep and oversee their digital advertisement stock. Together with ad exchanges, this tech enables newspapers and various online content creators to generate revenue through the sale of advertisements.

In April, Brinkema determined that Google had illegally linked publishers' utilization of its ad exchange with their usage of its ad server. She also found that these practices implemented anti-competitive measures which did not benefit Google’s publishing clients. According to her ruling, this behavior damaged competitive environments and adversely affected both publishers and, as a result, end-users across the internet.

Google had earlier considered putting its ad exchange up for sale to address concerns from European antitrust regulators, as Romero.my.id reported in September.

(Reported by Jody Godoy in New York; Edited by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)