Google begins its defense in antitrust case alleging monopoly over advertising technology

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Google opened its protection in opposition to allegations that it holds an unlawful monopoly on internet advertising know-how Friday with witness testimony saying the trade is vastly extra advanced and aggressive than portrayed by the federal authorities.

“The trade has been exceptionally fluid over the past 18 years,” mentioned Scott Sheffer, a vp for international partnerships at Google, the corporate’s first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court docket in Alexandria.

The Justice Division and a coalition of states contend that Google constructed and maintained an unlawful monopoly over the know-how that facilitates the shopping for and promoting of on-line advertisements seen by shoppers.

Google counters that the federal government’s case improperly focuses on a slender kind of on-line advertisements — basically the oblong ones that seem on the highest and on the right-hand facet of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google’s attorneys mentioned the Supreme Courtroom has warned judges in opposition to taking motion when coping with quickly rising know-how like what Sheffer described due to the danger of error or unintended penalties.

Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competitors it faces from social media firms, Amazon, streaming TV suppliers and others who provide advertisers the means to achieve on-line shoppers.

Justice Division attorneys known as witnesses to testify for 2 weeks earlier than resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways in which automated advert exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to find out which advertisements are positioned in entrance of which shoppers and the way a lot they value.

The division contends the auctions are finessed in delicate ways in which profit Google to the exclusion of would-be opponents and in ways in which stop publishers from making as a lot cash as they in any other case may for promoting their advert house.

It additionally says that Google’s know-how, when used on all aspects of an advert transaction, permits Google to maintain 36 cents on the greenback of any specific advert buy, billions of which happen each single day.

Executives at media firms like Gannett, which publishes USA Right now, and Information Corp., which owns the Wall Streel Journal and Fox Information, have mentioned that Google dominates the panorama with know-how utilized by publishers to promote advert house in addition to by advertisers trying to purchase it. The merchandise are tied collectively so publishers have to make use of Google’s know-how if they need easy accessibility to its giant cache of advertisers.

The federal government mentioned in its grievance filed final 12 months that at a minimal Google must be compelled to dump the portion of its enterprise that caters to publishers, to interrupt up its dominance.

In his testimony Friday, Sheffer defined how Google’s instruments have developed through the years and the way it vetted publishers and advertisers to protect in opposition to points like malware and fraud.

The trial started Sept. 9, only a month after a choose within the District of Columbia declared Google’s core enterprise, its ubiquitous search engine, an illegal monopoly. That trial continues to be ongoing to find out what treatments, if any, the choose could impose.

The advert know-how at query within the Virginia case doesn’t generate the identical type of income for Goggle as its search engine does, however continues to be believed to usher in tens of billions of {dollars} yearly.

Abroad, regulators have additionally accused Google of anticompetitive conduct. However the firm won a victory this week when a an EU court docket overturned a 1.49 billion euro ($1.66 billion) antitrust high quality imposed five years ago that focused a distinct phase of the corporate’s internet advertising enterprise.