US forces Google to sell two of its ad products

New Delhi: Amid allegations of illegally dominating the ad-tech market, the US DOJ has asked Google to sell its AdX digital ad marketplace and DFP platform for managing and delivering ads on websites, as per reports.

The steps, including divestitures, will help end Google’s monopolies and increase competition in the ad-exchange and publisher ad-server markets, said the DOJ in a court filing on Monday.

Previously, the US district judge, Leonie Brinkema, agreed that Google has a monopoly over the tools used by online publishers to host ad space and the software that facilitates transactions between online publishers and advertisers.

In her ruling, Judge Brinkema said Google had “wilfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts” which ultimately resulted in it obtaining “monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market”.

Additionally, in a second case, the Department of Justice argued Google used exclusionary agreements, such as paying Apple billions annually to be the default search engine on iPhones, to lock out competitors.

In August 2024, a federal judge ruled Google acted illegally to maintain its search monopoly.

Google has proposed alternate solutions to restore competition, such as behavioural remedies like making real-time bids available to competitors, but the company asserts that the court cannot force it to sell its businesses.

"The DOJ's additional proposals to force a divestiture of our ad tech tools go well beyond the Court's findings, have no basis in law, and would harm publishers and advertisers," Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of Regulatory Affairs, said in a statement to Reuters.

Google's Ad Exchange (AdX) is a real-time marketplace where publishers and advertisers can buy and sell digital advertising space through an automated auction system. It allows large publishers to sell their ad inventory to a wide range of advertisers, often in real-time, and typically involves real-time bidding (RTB).