A US court has ruled that Google illegally obtained and maintained a monopoly in the digital advertising market - another antitrust defeat for the tech giant that could lead to the forced sale of part of its business. This is reported by the Financial Times, writes UNN.
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Judge Leonie Brinkema, who is hearing the case in federal court in Virginia, said on Thursday that Google "knowingly" monopolized the ad exchange and ad server markets for publishers.
At the same time, the judge acknowledged that the US Department of Justice, which filed the lawsuit, failed to prove that Google unfairly dominated the third component of the market - advertising networks for advertisers.
In response, Google said: "We won half of this case and will appeal the other half... We disagree with the court's decision regarding our tools for publishers. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our advertising technologies are simple, accessible and effective."
The ruling comes after a federal judge found last year in a separate antitrust case that Google spends billions of dollars on exclusive deals to maintain an illegal monopoly in the search market. The second phase of that trial, which will determine remedies, will begin next week.
In the search case, the Department of Justice demanded that Google sell the Chrome browser, stop annual payments of $20 billion to Apple for the right to be the default search engine, and share more data with competitors.