Google will return to a United States federal court on Monday as government lawyers push for the breakup of its advertising technology business, accusing the company of abusing its market power.
The trial will decide what penalties Google must face after an earlier ruling found that the tech giant held an illegal monopoly in digital advertising.
At the heart of the case is Google’s ad tech “stack,” the system used by publishers to sell ads and advertisers to buy them. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking the court to order Google to spin off its ad publisher and exchange services, and to bar the company from running an ad exchange for 10 years once the divestiture is completed.
Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema, who earlier ruled against Google in January, will preside over the remedy phase. The hearing is expected to last a week, with closing arguments to follow later.
“We’ve said from the start that DOJ’s case misunderstands how digital advertising works and ignores how the landscape has dramatically evolved, with increasing competition and new entrants,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, said in a statement.
Google has argued that the DOJ’s demands are too extreme, technically unrealistic, and could harm smaller businesses that rely on its tools.
The case marks the second major trial Google has faced this month. Earlier, another federal judge rejected a government push to force the company to sell off its Chrome browser in a separate antitrust case over online search. Instead, Google was only ordered to share more data with competitors. Shares in Alphabet, Google’s parent company, have since surged by more than 20 percent.
In Europe, Google is also under pressure. The European Commission earlier this month fined the company 2.95 billion euros ($3.47 billion) over its ad tech dominance and ordered behavioral changes, though critics accused Brussels of going too soft after hinting that a breakup might be necessary.
Judge Brinkema has already signaled she will pay close attention to the outcome of the search monopoly case when deciding how to move forward in this trial.
This lawsuit is part of a larger bipartisan effort in Washington, with five ongoing antitrust cases targeting the world’s biggest technology companies.
