Federal Court Confirms Google’s Monopoly Over Digital Advertising Market

Today’s ruling in United States v. Google LLC confirms what the Open Markets Institute has long warned: Google is a monopolist in digital advertising as well as search, wielding its power to crush competition and extract rents from publishers and anyone on the open web. 

“This is a landmark win for journalism and the free and fair exchange of information, which have been cratering for years under Google’s monopoly tollbooth,” said Barry Lynn, Open Markets Institute executive director. “The court confirmed that Google used its monopoly power—acquired through the purchase of DoubleClick—to lock in publishers and foreclose competition in ad exchanges, violating antitrust law and putting our digital markets and information environment under Google’s control. That’s illegal monopolization, plain and simple.” 

The ruling finds that Google’s coercive bundling tactics—forcing publishers to use its ad exchange in order to access its dominant ad server—are not just harmful, but unlawful. This echoes Open Markets’ long-standing position: tying and bundling practices, when deployed by dominant firms, are tools of monopoly maintenance and abuse—not efficiency. 

While the court did not fully endorse the Department of Justice’s market definition for advertiser ad networks, it ruled decisively that Google has illegally tied its dominant publisher ad server with its ad exchange, foreclosing rivals and reinforcing its monopoly across the digital ad stack. The court’s decision validates years of investigative work by the Department of Justice as well as public interest organizations like Open Markets. The next step must be accountability and structural reform: require Google to sell off its publisher ad server and ad exchange. 

Crucially, the court has instructed the DOJ and Google to propose a schedule for a remedies hearing within seven days, signaling that structural separation is now on the table. The DOJ’s original remedy proposal—breaking up Google’s ad tech empire by forcing it to divest its publisher ad server and ad exchange—should now move forward with urgency. 

The ruling also underscores how monopoly harms persist regardless of technical debates over market boundaries. In closing arguments, DOJ prosecutors rightly argued that even if their proposed market definitions didn’t hold, the conduct itself—Google’s self-dealing and foreclosure—would still violate antitrust laws. The judge agreed. 

“This decision proves what we’ve always known: Google has used its control over infrastructure to dominate digital markets, manipulate the way information is valued and shared, and tax the open web,” said Dr. Courtney Radsch, director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets. “Now the question is whether our institutions have the courage to restore competition through structural remedies." 

The Open Markets Institute first raised the ways in which Google’s monopoly power threatens the news media, the sharing of reliable information, and individual liberty and democracy, at a 2016 event featuring U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and again in 2018 during our forum with U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar Open Markets strongly supported the investigations by state attorneys general into Google’s monopoly behavior. 

The Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets covered both Google trials and has written extensively on further solutions, including “must-carry” requirements for Google. For more, see the Center for Journalism and Liberty’s resource page, which will continue to be updated as news develops. 

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