ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Today, President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) begins another flawed, misguided trial against Google in U.S. District Court.
This second trial focuses on Google’s digital advertising practices, threatening to undermine the very innovation driving the ad tech industry and ultimately harm small businesses and consumers.
“This case isn’t about protecting competition; it’s about the DOJ cherry-picking a market definition to manufacture a monopoly claim. The suit completely ignores the realities of today’s ad landscape, where competition thrives and is consistently growing across platforms and mediums. On Planet DOJ, no one advertises on social media, TV or retail. The DOJ’s claims fail on the needed requirements of antitrust law and basic logic,” said Carl Szabo, NetChoice Vice President & General Counsel.
Szabo continued: “Further, forcing Google to work with advertisers the DOJ prefers will expose consumers to more fraud and spam, driving up costs and lowering quality, harming consumers and small businesses. The real beneficiaries of this misguided approach are the government’s preferred competitors at the expense of consumers and competition. Antitrust law is meant to protect consumers—not the government’s desired winners and losers.”
- Google’s display ad share is less than 26% when you account for platforms like Instagram and streaming video—it’s a shrinking piece of the pie. Far from monopolizing the market, Google is losing ground in a landscape where competition is thriving.
- Publishers use multiple ad exchanges, including Google. The New York Times, for example, uses 15 different advertisers. CNN.com uses over 100 different advertisers. This is clearly a highly competitive marketplace.
- Google actually makes its tools available to manage ads on competitor’s networks. This enables even more competition for advertising.
- The government’s witnesses include Google’s competitors while Google is calling small and midsize businesses as their witnesses.
- The DOJ’s case does not focus on Americans or their needs. It focuses on the complaints of some competitors, while ignoring the vast benefits and low costs of Google’s ad business to small and midsize businesses.
Please contact press@netchoice.org with inquiries.