By Marty Swant – November 26, 2024 –
Ivy Liu
After weeks of extreme testament and mountains of proof, the Department of Justice and Google rested their case with closing arguments in the Google adtech antitrust trial in federal court.
Making the federal government’s case Monday early morning, DOJ lawyers pointed out the Charles Dickens unique “A Tale of Two Cities” to contrast Google’s representation of a growing sector market with the darker truth dealt with by publishers and adtech companies. Google’s attorneys challenged the federal government’s analysis of the market as inadequate to show damage and explained a market with development, development and plenty of competitors.
The market now waits for a judgment anticipated in the coming months. Observers state the concerns and remarks from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema may provide a glance regarding what she may be thinking of the truths of the case. Some stated Brinkema appeared to comprehend that open web screen advertisements aren’t the like other advertisement formats, which appeared to signify the judge wasn’t completely convinced by Google’s claims of not being a monopoly.
“Google utilized the broadest possible market meaning and after that argued that output was increasing,” stated Roger Alford, an antitrust law teacher at Notre Dame. “But when Judge Brinkema asked whether output was increasing utilizing the Plaintiffs’ market meaning, Google had no response.”
Megan Gray, the creator of GrayMatters Law & & Policy, believes the truths lean in the DOJ’s favor. She discussed Google legal representative Karen Dunn at one point revealing a slide recommending Google having a smaller sized market share than the DOJ recommended. Brinkema discovered the slide dealt with the total advertisement market– consisting of social media, linked Television and apps– and asked if there was another slide that revealed simply the open web display screen market in concern.
“It simply type of encapsulated the entire Google method to, and I do not believe any person discovers that convincing,” stated Gray, who was formerly a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission. “Anybody in the [ad tech] world understands it’s genuine market. It’s type of like the exact same method that Google had in the search case, declaring with a straight face that there isn’t an online search engine market.”
Google’s case focused greatly on the legal defense that judgment in favor of the DOJ would suggest reversing 2 significant SCOTUS judgments: Verizon v. Trinko in 2004 and Ohio v American Express in 2018. Attorneys for Google likewise argued the DOJ didn’t bring adequate marketer witnesses to show damage, recommended that adtech witness testament about decreased competitors wasn’t enough to encourage the court and declared the DOJ’s case relies too greatly on 3 significant publishers without considering smaller sized publishers. (Brinkema likewise asked the DOJ about why it didn’t bring marketers to the stand.)
In mentioning the Amex case, Google’s side argued the adtech trial likewise fixates a single two-sided market rather of the DOJ’s described 3 different markets for advertisement exchanges, advertisement networks and publisher advertisement servers. In spite of being considered as anticompetitive, Google stated its actions in fact benefit the whole advertisement tech community. Participants observed Brinkema appeared to question if the Amex case uses to the Google trial due to the fact that the programmatic marketing market is auction-based and not the very same setup as credit card deals.
“At this point the DOJ appears to believe [Brinkema] comprehends that even if the anti-competitive conduct is examined under Google’s market meaning, [the DOJ’s] claims of monopolistic conduct will dominate,” stated Karina Montoya, senior press reporter and policy expert for the Open Markets Institute.
Brinkema likewise raised issues about Google officers apparently ruining proof by switching off chat histories and identifying non-legal e-mails as attorney-client opportunity. When Google attorney Karen Dunn implicated the DOJ of cherrypicking expressions from Google’s internal e-mails, Brinkema stated Dunn remained in harmful area with that line of defense given that numerous parts of chat logs and e-mails were missing out on. That led the DOJ throughout counterclaim to ask the judge to embrace an “negative reasoning” position, which is a legal concept that permits a court to presume the missing out on info would have been undesirable to the celebration accountable for its damage.
Throughout the trial, the DOJ used a “clear and conclusive” argument that Google broke antitrust law in the digital marketing market, stated Elise Phillips, policy counsel at Public Knowledge, a think tank concentrated on the open web. She believes it supplied the structure upon which the judge can evaluate competitive characteristics.
“A clear meaning of the marketplace will supply a higher understanding of how Google may manage crucial inputs in the market,” Phillips stated. “This results in DOJ and Google having an extremely various concept of how to specify the digital advertisement market, and whether appropriate competitors exists.”
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