Google faces six years of court oversight in ad tech antitrust case

A federal judge ordered Google to operate its advertising technology business under the oversight of an antitrust compliance monitor. The company must also make a series of behavioral changes to restore competition, according to a remedies opinion (PDF) unsealed yesterday.

• The opinion provides the first detailed look at the remedies.
• U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema announced earlier this month that Google wouldn’t be forced to break up its ad tech business.
• Brinkema concluded that the court’s restrictions would “effectively pry open to competition” the publisher ad-server and ad-exchange markets that Google was found to have monopolized.

Google will operate under court oversight. Google was ordered to appoint an antitrust compliance monitor. Independent oversight is necessary because of the “gravity” of the company’s antitrust violations, Brinkema concluded.

• The monitor will oversee Google’s compliance with the court’s final judgment, but with less authority than the Justice Department requested.
• The remedies will remain in place for six years, rather than the 15 years sought by federal and state enforcers.

Google must change how its ad tech works. The ruling requires Google to make several changes intended to make it easier for rival ad tech providers to compete. Google must:

• Allow rival publisher ad servers to access AdX’s real-time bids.
• Stop requiring publishers that use its ad server to also use AdX.
• End practices that publishers argued locked them into its ad tech tools.
• Comply with new data-sharing requirements intended to level the playing field.

Why the judge rejected a breakup. The newly released opinion explains why Brinkema declined the Justice Department’s request to force Google to sell AdX or other parts of its advertising technology business.

• Structural remedies were “neither realistic nor needed,” Brinkema wrote.
• The behavioral remedies were enough to restore competition and prevent Google from returning to anticompetitive conduct, she concluded.

Why we care. The court chose regulation over restructuring. The big question now is whether six years of court supervision and behavioral rules can create lasting competition without breaking up Google’s ad tech business.