U.S. Justice Department Seeks Breakup of Google’s Ad Tech Empire in A Fresh Proposal

The United States Ministry of Justice (DoJ) has unveiled one of the most aggressive antitrust remedies in modern American history, offering a large -scale break in Google’s digital advertising technology activity.

The plan, filed on Monday before the Federal Court, demands that the technology giant cede its advertising platforms Cornerstone, ADX (its advertising exchange) and DFP (DoubleClick for publishers, now Google Ad Manager), to dismantle what the government calls a “cycle of self-reproduction of domination”.

This decision stems from an April decision in which a federal judge concluded that Google had violated antitrust laws by an “campaign of exclusion conduct of a decade”. At the center of this conduct was the close integration by Google of its advertising tools for demand and supply, which allowed the company to operate simultaneously as a broker, auctioneer and participating in the vast online advertising market, giving it an undue advantage and deleting competition.

Devant from the stack of Google advertising technology

Under the Doj’s proposal, Google would be held Sell ​​ADX and DFP with separate entities. The Ministry of Justice argues that the company used these platforms to lock publishers and advertisers, distort the results of the auctions and tilt the digital advertising ecosystem in its favor by forcing the use of its own exchanges and tools.

The Doj describes a three -phase plan:

1. Outdoor integration – In the first phase, Google would be forced to open its advertising management platform to competitors. This would involve creating an API to allow the exchange of third -party announcements to integrate into DFP and create export tools so that the publishers transfer their data to rival announcements.
2. Transparency of auction – Google would be required to open the source of the code used in its final advertising auctions and prohibit it from reproducing this code in its own services, in particular Chrome, Android and YouTube, ensuring that the company cannot simply reintroduce the same architecture under different brands.
3. Complete divestment – The last step would oblige Google to give up the DFP to a company independent of that which acquires ADX. Separation, supports the DoJ, is necessary to prevent continuous vertical integration which gives Google an excessive control over the entire advertising transaction chain.

In addition, the DOJ recommends a 10 -year ban on Google operating an exchange of advertisements and the use of strict data that prohibits taking advantage of user data collected via research, Gmail, YouTube, Android and Chrome to obtain other advantages on the advertising market. These mark the proposal for breaking Google’s advertising technology as the most ambitious regulatory intervention to date in the 21st century digital economy.

“Disrupting and worried”, Google repels

Google fiercely opposes the DoJ’s proposal and has filed its own counter-recourse. The company argues that a disinvestment would not only disturb its activities, but also for the broader ecosystem of publishers and advertisers who depend on its tools. In a file, Google maintains that it legally acquired ADX and DFP and that no evidence suggests that they have been obtained or made with anti -competitive intention.

Google maintains that rotation of platforms is not easy to transfer software licenses. According to the company, the source code is deeply integrated into its wider systemsWhich means that would take considerable years and resources to create autonomous versions of platforms that could operate independently of Google’s infrastructure.

“In the meantime, this process would considerably harm ADX and DFP customers,” said Google. “During the years of reconstruction or the two of ADX and DFP, the coding of new versions of the tools would conscript precious resources … and would leave existing customers with degraded services.”

Instead, Google offered a closer set of behavioral remedies. These include:

• Allow ADX real -time offers to be accessible to rival announcements.
• End the policies that prevent these offers from being shared with competitors.
• Depreciating the “unified pricing rules” (UPR), which, according to the MJ, gave Google an excessive lever effect on the soils.
• Officially stops controversial auction tools like First Look and Last Look, which had enabled Privileged Early and late Advertising Advertising Advertisers.

The case in the context: Big Tech and The Antitrust Reckoning

This affair is only a front in the wider DOJ offensive against Google and Big Tech in general. The agency simultaneously pursues a separate case targeting the domination of Google in research, which led to another legal defeat for the company. In this case, the DoJ would seek the forced sale of Google Chrome, the most used browser in the world.

The combined pressure threatens to fracture the closely integrated business model of Google and potentially disentangle its influence on billions of daily online interactions.

The DOJ offensive also agrees with a global trend: regulators of the European Union, the United Kingdom, India and Australia have taken increasingly aggressive positions against technological monopolies, often targeting the same market structures as Google is based. In particular, EU regulators have previously levied fines of several billion euros on Google for antitrust violations involving a research bias, Android dominance and Google purchases.

In 2022, the United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a similar survey on Google’s advertising technology practices, examining its vertical integration and market domination. And in France, Google was sentenced to a fine for the self-procurement of its own advertising services to the detriment of competitors. Currently, Google faces a collective appeal of 5 billion pounds Sterling ($ 6.6 billion) in the United Kingdom, on the allegation of exploiting its “almost total domination” in the online research market to inflate advertising prices.

If the DoJ succeeds in breaking Google’s advertising activities, it will mark a turning point in global digital regulations. For years, criticisms have accused the American authorities of being too indulgent, allowing the consolidation of companies to widen competition and to endanger democratic standards. Now, with bipartite support for the congress for technological reform and the assembly of judicial victories, this tide seems to turn.

But Google clearly indicated that he intended to appeal the decision of antitrust origin, and the court is not obliged to accept the appeal proposed by one or the other party. This means that a stretched legal battle seems inevitable. However, even the prospect of a forced assignment or a structural reform, sends a powerful message to the Silicon Valley and the broader business world: the era of the antitrust of the hands come to a END.

Analysts believe that the implications will affect through the entire technological ecosystem if the courts confirm the Doj’s remedy and force a break from Google. It should also embrace regulators to continue similar actions against Amazon’s logistical arm, the Meta advertising targeting system or the domination of the Apple App Store.