Google’s goal was to control web ad technology, US prosecutor says as trial begins

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A Justice Department prosecutor said Alphabet’s Google sought to dominate all aspects of online advertising technology by controlling competitors and customers, as a hearing began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, in the technology giant’s latest antitrust showdown.

Prosecutors say Google largely dominates the technical infrastructure that funds the flow of news and information to websites through more than 150,000 online ad sales every second.

In her opening statement, Julia Tarver Wood, an attorney for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said Google used classic monopoly-building strategies to eliminate competitors through acquisitions, force customers to use its products, and control the way transactions occur in the online advertising market.

“Google isn’t here because they’re big, they’re here because they used their size to crush the competition,” he said.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema is hearing the case without a jury, and will issue her verdict after a trial expected to last several weeks.

The Justice Department and the coalition of states based their case on “ancient history,” when Google was still working on making its devices able to connect to competitors’, said Karen Dunn, Google’s lead counsel.

He said Google’s tools are now interoperable with its rivals, and the company faces competition from technology companies including Amazon.com Inc and Comcast as digital ad spending shifts to apps and streaming video.

He said the case was “like a time capsule that if you broke open you’d find a BlackBerry, an iPod and a Blockbuster Video card.”

Dunn compared these allegations to the claims recently dismissed by Google in the search monopoly case.

Dunn left the courtroom after delivering opening statements. She is preparing Vice President Kamala Harris for her televised debate with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

In the lawsuit, prosecutors are trying to show that Google used its dominant position in technology to prevent publishers and advertisers from using other tools and to undercut bids placed through competitors’ products.

Gannett advertising executive Tim Wolfe said in testimony Monday that the company has been using Google’s publisher ad server for about 13 years and that there is no viable alternative.

If Brinkema finds Google broke the law, she will later consider prosecutors’ request that Google be forced to sell at least Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes Google’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.

Alphabet shares fell 1.7% in the afternoon.

Google’s ad tech tools accounted for $20 billion, or 11%, of the company’s gross revenue in 2020 and about $1 billion, or 2.6%, of operating profit that year, according to research from stock analyst Wedbush.

In 2020, Ad Manager represented 4.1% of revenue and 1.5% of operating profit, according to an analysis of Wedbush research and court documents.

The most recent figures were redacted from court documents.

The case is one of many challenging Big Tech monopolies.

The Justice Department last month won another case over Google’s dominance in online search, and is separately suing Apple. The US Federal Trade Commission is pursuing cases against Facebook parent company Meta Platform and Amazon.

This article is generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.