A federal judge ruled that Google has illegally monopolized some online advertising technology markets, a hard blow for a fundamental part of the company’s business, according to a Bloomberg News report.
The Federal Judge of the District Leonie Brinkema ruled Thursday that the Alphabet unit violated the antimonopoly law in advertising exchange markets and tools used by websites to sell advertising spaces, known as advertisements.
However, he said that the company did not meet the definition of monopoly in a third tool market used by advertisers to buy graphic ads.
Alphabet’s shares rapidly sank up to 3.2% after the ruling, while Trade Desk fired almost 8%.
The federal judge’s decision could allow prosecutors to advocate the separation of Google advertising products.
Lee: US Democratic Senators question Google and Microsoft’s agreements
The United States Department of Justice has said that Google should have to sell at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the advertisement publication and its advertisement market.
Google will now face the possibility that two US courts ordering to sell assets or change their business practices, since a Washington judge will hold a trial on the request of the Justice Department of the Department of Forcing Google to sell their Chrome browser and take other measures to end their domain in online searches.
Google had already studied the possibility of selling its advertisements to appease European antimonopoly regulators, Reuters reported in September.
Brinkema supervised a three -week trial in which the Department of Justice and a coalition of states tried to demonstrate that Google monopolized the market servers markets for editors and advertisement networks for advertisers, and tried to dominate the market exchanges market, which are located between buyers and vendors.
Google used classic monopoly tactics consisting of eliminating competitors through acquisitions, forcing customers to use their products and control the way in which transactions were performed in the online advertising market, prosecutors said in the trial.
Google argued that the case focused on the past, when the company was still working so that its tools could connect to competition products.
Prosecutors also ignored the competition of technology companies such as Amazon.com and Comcast as the digital advertising spending moved towards applications and video transmission, said Google’s lawyer.
With information from Bloomberg News and Reuters
Follow us on Google News to always keep you informed
