Google alleges that it faces stiff competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and others. It further alleges that customers have benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts and features that the government challenges. “Google has designed a suite of products that work effectively together and attract a valuable customer base,” the company's lawyers wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.
For years, Google publicly maintained that its ad tech projects would not harm customers or competitors. “We can help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will encourage the creation of even richer and more diverse content on the Internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 before U.S. senators concerned about the impact of the DoubleClick deal on competition and privacy. U.S. antitrust regulators approved the purchase at the time. But at least one of them has said in retrospect that he should have blocked it.
Deep control
The Justice Department alleges that the DoubleClick acquisition left Google “with a pool of captive publishers who now had fewer alternatives and faced significant switching costs associated with moving to another publisher ad server.” Google's tool for publishers now has a global market share of 91 percent, according to court documents. The company has similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (about 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court documents say.
Google's dominance, the government argues, has “hampered the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the advertising technology tools they prefer to use and reduced the number and quality of viable options available to them.”
The government alleges that Google employees told them internally that they were getting an unfair share of the money advertisers spent on advertising — in some cases, more than a third of every dollar spent.
Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be split into separate companies, so that each of its advertising services can compete on its own merits without one doubling down on the other. The rivals also support rules that would prevent Google from favoring its own services. “What everyone in the industry is looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.
As Google ad tech alternatives scoop up more business, not everyone is so sure users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to the Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may change, but the experience for investors—or, in this case, internet users—doesn’t.
Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, user experiences will get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-blocking developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products could also become more expensive because companies will not only have to hire extra help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an advertising executive turned associate professor at Syracuse University, told reporters in a recent conversation hosted by a Google-funded advocacy group.
But Dina Srinivasan, a former advertising executive who wrote an antitrust article for the Stanford Technology Law Review about Google’s dominance, says advertisers would ultimately pay lower fees and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would break the spell Google reportedly created with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.
