This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is once again in the courtroom spotlight this time facing a remedy trial that could reshape how it does business in digital advertising. The trial kicked off in late September in Alexandria, Virginia, just months after Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google had broken antitrust laws by using its ad tech arm to maintain monopoly power.
The Justice Department and 17 states want the judge to go big asking her to force Google to sell its AdX ad exchange and make the auction system behind its publisher ad server, DFP, open-source. If that doesn’t restore competition, the DOJ says Google should be required to sell DFP altogether. But experts warn that such a breakup would be messy and slow. Columbia professor Jason Nieh told the court it would be an undertaking of unprecedented complexity, possibly taking more than five years to complete.
This comes just weeks after another ruling found Google held an illegal monopoly in online search, though the judge stopped short of forcing it to sell Chrome a move analysts saw as a win for the company.
The ruling, if anything, is a gentle slap on the wrist, said Sara Owens, senior VP of analytics at AXM. She added that the real challenge for Google might come from the rise of AI search tools like OpenAI and Perplexity, which are already changing how people find information.
