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Google could get a lump of coal from the government this year.
Hey, sometimes ice just gets written down.
In September, Google went on trial to face accusations that it has an illegal monopoly over the online advertising industry.
Google defended itself for three weeks in a courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, presided over by federal judge Leonie Brinkema, whose job it is now to decide (her ruling is expected early next year) whether Google used its market power to stifle competition and maintain its dominance.
The Justice Department says, “Uh, yeah.”
Google says, “No.”
If you want more specific information about their arguments, listen to this podcast with our guest Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence at Check My Ads, who moved to Alexandria during the trial to cover courtroom proceedings every day. 🎙️
AdExchanger was also there, sitting in the gallery during the first week of testimony and frantically scribbling notes in pencil in a spiral notebook, since no electronics or recording devices of any kind are allowed in the courtroom.
While the ad industry awaits Judge Brinkema’s decision, hurry up with AdExchanger’s in-depth coverage.
The countdown begins…
Thanks to the DOJ, we now know what Google really thinks about Header Bidding
There’s nothing like a bunch of evidence being unsealed during a court case.
Although certain documents released in the US v. Google case were heavily redacted and other evidence remained under seal until the trial began, there were still thousands of pages of depositions, court filings, internal emails and messages to investigate—including many juicy desserts.
Like this nugget from an internal Google presentation on DFP in 2015: “Without a first look,” Google wrote, “we’re left with inventory that other buyers looked at and didn’t want to pay for.”
Yes, the first look was a big advantage!
Google is fighting to retain ad tech executives in its upcoming antitrust trial
About two weeks before the trial began on September 9, Google filed a motion to exclude testimony about its alleged anticompetitive behavior from witnesses who are not economists or antitrust experts.
If Google had been successful, people like Index Exchange CEO Andrew Casale, former AppNexis CEO Brian O’Kelley and Kevel CEO James Avery would have been prevented from taking the stand or having their statements read aloud in court.
Google’s request was dismissed on September 4.
Project File: A look at all of Google’s secret internal projects, as revealed by the DOJ
What do Hercule Poirot, Ben Bernanke, Star Wars and CS Lewis have in common?
If you’re an ad tech geek, you’ll know the answer right away.
All served as inspiration for code names associated with various internal Google projects, including several related to Google’s header bidding countermeasures. Many were first disclosed in the DOJ’s original complaint against Google.
The trial begins…
AdExchanger personally attended the first week of the trial in Alexandria, and we have the writing blisters to prove it.
One of our readers wrote us that our daily messages from the courtroom are “the next best thing to actually being there.”
So pop some popcorn and relive the action:
Publishers feel seen in Google Ad Tech Antitrust trial
This trial, meanwhile, has been something of a collective catharsis for publishers, with all the pubs AdExchanger spoke to saying they felt vindicated – but far from shocked – by the revelations at the stand.
“I wish I was more surprised by any of these emails and excerpts,” Justin Wohl, CRO for Snopes.com and TV Tropes, told AdExchanger. “The experience of working with the Google advantage for almost 10 years has conditioned me to fully expect this.”
Buried DOJ evidence reveals how Google handled Trade Desk
While the trial focused on Google’s supply-side business and its publisher ad server, the DOJ also uncovered evidence that painted a new picture of how Google interacts and competes with its main DSP rival, The Trade Desk.
For example, consider this 2020 email exchange between Sissie Hsiao, then Google’s VP of display, video and app advertising, and a colleague at Google in which she recounts a conversation she had with Dave Pickles, then CTO of The Trade The board.
Hsiao asked Pickles for his perspective on what it’s like to work with Chrome engineers, to which he apparently replied, “Chrome PMs are drunk on power.”
Spicy quotes to quote from the Google Ad Tech Antitrust trial
The trial itself was also full of zingers. Read this article for a list of some of the most significant quotes from three weeks of testimony, including this one:
In 2019, Stephanie Layser, now with AWS, was vice president of ad technology at News Corp. At the time, she wrote an email to Google asking for a meeting to discuss her deep concerns about the introduction of uniform pricing rules. In the meeting, which was held with two Google employees, she was told that she was “emotional and unproductive”.
And now we are waiting…
The Google Ad Tech Antitrust case is over – and here’s what happens next
Google rested its defense on September 30 and the case is over, just three weeks after it began.
Both sides had until Nov. 4 to file their revised findings of fact, which is a legal document that describes the material facts of the case.
Closing arguments were scheduled just before the Thanksgiving break on Nov. 25.
What was it like to testify at the Google Ad Tech Antitrust trial? We asked CEO Kevel
In this Q&A, James Avery, CEO and founder of Kevel (formerly Adzerk), reflects on his experience testifying during the trial. He took a stand on the first day.
“I never thought I’d have the opportunity to really say my part like this,” Avery told AdExchanger.
Adzerk tried – and failed – to compete with Google in the ad server market. The company later changed to Kevel and was forced to pivot its business model from the open web to retail media.
Google and the DOJ are reiterating their cases in the countdown to closing arguments
Google and the government filed their findings on Nov. 4, as planned, which included detailed recounts of the case summarizing the evidence and allegations.
These documents are another tool that Judge Brinkema will use as a reference when making a decision.
Which is what Judge Brinkema focused on during his closing arguments in the US v. Google case
And on Nov. 25, lawyers for both sides were given 90 minutes each to present their final case to Judge Brinkema before she retired to consider the evidence and write her ruling.
The judge had the opportunity to interrupt and ask questions during closing arguments – and she had some great ones.
At one point, she was interrupted by Karen Dunn, Google’s general counsel, who was in the middle of explaining why a certain 2018 Supreme Court decision, Ohio v. Amex, applies to this case.
In Ohio v. Amex, SCOTUS found that a court in an antitrust case must consider the network effects arising from a transaction. Ad tech tools, Dunn argues, operate in a single, two-sided marketplace with buyers on one side and sellers on the other. The conduct could ultimately be found to be anticompetitive if only the impact on one side were considered, which is what Google said the DOJ did by focusing only on publishers.
However, Judge Brinkema did not seem convinced. She said she liked Amex’s argument at first, but became less convinced of its relevance here over time.
“I’ve read the Amex case more times than I probably should have,” she said. “At first this case seemed very attractive… but now it seems to me that we are dealing with a completely different setting.”
And now we are waiting for her decision, which is expected at the beginning of next year.
🎙️ So that was a lot, but if somehow you still haven’t had enough, warm up those AirPods. We also have podcasts.
