Google Facing Breakup of Ad Business as DOJ Recommends Divestiture After Antitrust Ruling

The United States Justice Department wants Google to make major changes to its ad business in order to restore competition, with the government suggesting that Google divest both Ad Exchange (AdX) and Ad Manager (often referred to as DFP).

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The DoJ made the recommendation in an updated filing submitted as part of its ongoing antitrust fight with Google. Last month, Google was found to have an illegal monopoly in online advertising, manipulating the market to cause harm to advertisers, publishers, and consumers. The court is now mulling remedies to curb Google's behavior, and it is considering suggestions from the DoJ.

AdX is Google's ad exchange marketplace where advertisers can purchase ad space from publishers in real-time through auctions, while DFP is an ad management platform that publishers can use for ad inventory management, selling, scheduling, and managing ad inventory. The DoJ wants Google to sell off AdX right away, and do a phased divestiture of DFP.

The DoJ also suggests that Google's AdWords product should deal with all third-party ad tech tools on non-discriminatory terms for bidding, matching, and placement of ads, and that Google should be prohibited from preferentially routing buyside demand from AdWords to any as exchange or publisher ad server. Google may also be required to share key ad server data and prohibited from using data gathered from Google Search, Gmail, and other Google properties to evaluate digital ad inventory on third-party tools and websites.

Google is also facing off with the Department of Justice over search, as the company was found to have an online search monopoly as well. Google could be forced to sell off the Chrome browser and make major changes to data sharing that would impact Google Search's market dominance.

Tag: Google

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Top Rated Comments

turbineseaplane Avatar
20 weeks ago
"Good"

That's all I have to say on this one

There is so much antitrust enforcement that needs to be done, across all industries in the US.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Spock Avatar
20 weeks ago
How will the search portion of Google make any money without ad revenue?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
needsomecoffee Avatar
20 weeks ago
Pichai (and Tim) are simple "ShareholderValue-Heads". Something Steve hated (Google "Toner Head"). It is complicated as maximizing SHV near-term can leave long-term value either deficient (not enough innovation... Tim), or subject to DOJ (Pichai). For both Tim and Sundar they could not care less as they became billionaires leveraging easily available, yet unsustainable brand/technical bulwarks. One thing about "Steve"... if you go back and analyze what he did, he likely never made a decison on near-term stock price. Tim & Sundar... not so much.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SnowPenguin Avatar
20 weeks ago
If it actually happened, it will be the first time one of the FAANG corporate get dismantled. These companies got way too powerful, so it's all good.

In the long term, this can lead to good things.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rizzo41999 Avatar
20 weeks ago
This is actually pretty wild.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Baritone_Guy Avatar
20 weeks ago

How will the search portion of Google make any money without ad revenue?

Very good question. So this only proves that if you make progress and get to the very top, you will be punished!
As you would say: “It’s illogical”.
No where does it say they won't make money off ads. This is all about the backend ad exchange markets. Not the actual displaying of ads in search results.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)