Google Loses Online Advertising Monopoly Case ⇥ axios.com

Scott Rosenberg and Sara Fischer, Axios:

Google’s dominance of the online advertising and ad-tech markets violates U.S. antitrust laws, a federal court ruled Thursday, in a decision that could scramble the massive digital ad universe.

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The court drew a distinction between the markets for advertising exchanges and ad servers, where it found Google has an illegal monopoly, and the general market for display ads online, where it found Google does not.

Emma Roth and Lauren Feiner, the Verge:

“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement to The Verge. “The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”

If the conclusion of this case is held after what I assume will be a lengthy and expensive appeals process, the corrections for this and Google’s illegal search monopoly will have a noticeable effect on the web.