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A US federal court ruling that Google illegally monopolised the market for open-web digital advertising will have profound implications for markets, regulators, and the future of the open internet and has been lauded as a “decisive step to restore fairness in digital markets”.
The 17 April decision, followed a 15-day trial in which the US Department of Justice (DOJ) proved Google’s dominance of advertising technology harmed competition, distorted pricing, and undermined the viability of independent online publishing.
The ruling represents the most significant antitrust decision against a technology company since the Microsoft case over two decades ago.
The central issue in the DOJ’s case was Google’s end-to-end control of the ad tech “stack” — the suite of technologies that facilitate the buying, selling, and placement of digital adverts. Google simultaneously operates the leading ad exchange (AdX), publisher ad server (DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP), and advertiser buying tools (such as DV360).
This vertical integration enables Google to act as both referee and player in every advertising transaction, presenting an unavoidable conflict of interest. The court found that Google exploited this position to manipulate auctions, disadvantage rivals, and consolidate its control over digital advertising revenues.
Judge Leonie Brinkema noted that Google had consistently deployed exclusionary tactics, including shutting off interoperability with rival services, conditioning access to its products on exclusivity, and leveraging user data across services to entrench its market position. These practices, the court found, were not the result of superior efficiency or innovation, but deliberate strategies to eliminate competition.
The ramifications of this decision extend far beyond US borders. In Europe, regulators have been investigating similar concerns about Google’s ad tech practices for several years and the ruling validates claims made by civil society groups, publishers, and advertisers that Google’s conduct is not only anti-competitive but structurally harmful to the internet ecosystem.
UK-based non-profit Movement for an Open Web (MOW) has long campaigned against Google’s dominance in ad tech, and in 2020, it complained to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), highlighting the risks posed by Google’s proposed Privacy Sandbox initiative.
Ostensibly presented as a privacy-enhancing reform, the Sandbox would in practice have removed the ability of third parties to access user-level data for ad targeting, thereby locking them out of key advertising functions while preserving Google’s access through its browser and search monopoly. The CMA launched an investigation, and in 2022 secured legally binding commitments from Google, based in part on MOW’s submissions.
The DOJ’s successful prosecution reinforces the strategic value of early regulatory intervention. The US government is now seeking structural remedies, including the divestment of technological tools that make up AdX and DFP — the core infrastructure of Google’s ad empire.
These remedies echo proposals made in the UK and elsewhere to break up vertically integrated platform monopolies. The precedent established by the US court gives both political and legal cover to similar interventions in other jurisdictions and shows that regulators need not accept the inevitability of Big Tech dominance.
News publishers, especially those operating outside the largest media conglomerates, have suffered disproportionately from Google’s practices. The centralisation of ad tech has cut them off from fair market access, eroded their margins, and forced dependence on opaque and unaccountable systems.
Far from creating an efficient digital marketplace, Google’s dominance has produced an environment in which news publishers cannot verify how much advertisers paid for space on their digital pages, how much they received, or whether the transaction was conducted on fair terms. The DOJ cited examples in which Google retained disproportionate shares of ad spend and manipulated auction dynamics to benefit its own businesses.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi, one of the senior officials leading the case, described the judgment as a “decisive step to restore fairness in digital markets and protect the foundations of online free expression”.
This ruling confirms what many have long suspected – that a single company’s control over the digital advertising market has stifled innovation, undermined the press, and skewed the economics of the internet
Abigail Slater, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
For UK policymakers, the timing is critical. The recently passed Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act grants the CMA broad new powers to impose conduct requirements, block self-preferencing ,and impose structural remedies on firms with Strategic Market Status (SMS). Google is likely to be among the first firms designated under the new regime. The DOJ’s victory provides a firm evidentiary basis for the CMA to act robustly.
There is also a cultural and constitutional dimension. Digital advertising finances independent journalism. When a single firm extracts monopoly rents from this system, it imperils the economic model that underpins investigative reporting, local news, and pluralist media. The economic consequences are matched by political ones: Google’s dominance allows it to act as gatekeeper, arbitrating which voices can access audiences and on what terms. The DOJ noted that this power extends beyond mere market control and affects democratic discourse.
The European Commission has its own case underway against Google’s ad tech practices, and its own new Digital Markets Act (DMA) gives Brussels a parallel route to enforce structural and behavioural remedies. The US ruling will inform the evidence base for those proceedings and may accelerate enforcement timelines. It also provides comfort to complainants across the EU who have often struggled to gain traction against dominant platforms.
The significance of the US court’s decision lies not only in the outcome but in the process. The DOJ pursued a traditional Sherman Act case using orthodox antitrust tools contained in that 1890 US law, which sets out the rules of competition and prohibits monopolies.
It gathered internal documents, presented economic analysis, and tested Google’s claims through witness cross-examination. The resulting judgment shows that even in the most technologically complex markets, conventional legal methods remain effective. and reaffirms the relevance of competition law as a tool for governing digital markets, contrary to claims that new statutory regimes are the only way forward.
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For all the fury from tech lobbying, the judgment cuts through the noise: Google broke the law. It did so not by building better products, but by using its dominance to prevent others from doing so. The task now is to ensure that this finding is translated into action in other markets, including the UK.
The open web, as a concept, depends on interoperability, transparency, and choice. Google’s business model — built on control, opacity, and exclusion — is antithetical to that vision.
The US ruling is a rare break in the wall of impunity that has surrounded dominant digital platforms. Whether it marks a turning point will depend on whether regulators in the UK and Europe are willing to match the DOJ’s resolve with their own.