Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti on Monday announced a significant victory in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia after Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google violated the law by maintaining illegal monopolies in the digital advertising technology industry—stifling competition and harming website publishers, advertisers, and consumers.
“When Google reinforces interlocking products to exclude competition in ad sales, it’s bad for content producers, it's bad for publishers, and ultimately it's bad for everyone,” said Attorney General Skrmetti. “Tennessee is proud to have been a part of this broad bipartisan coalition to hold a tech behemoth accountable and protect consumers.”
In January 2023, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, the Department of Justice, and a coalition of seventeen attorneys general sued Google for suppressing competition in the digital advertising technology industry. The lawsuit alleged Google’s market power allows it to control nearly every aspect of online ad sales, permitting it to extract higher fees from advertisers while paying lower amounts to publishers for their ad space. This conduct hurts consumers and web publishers by making it harder for websites to make enough money on their advertising inventory, preventing them from offering internet users content for free without subscriptions, paywalls, or alternative forms of monetization.
Last week’s decision found Google liable for violating antitrust law by acquiring and maintaining monopolies in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising. The judge also found Google liable for unlawfully tying together its publisher ad server and its ad exchange and found that Google harmed competition, its customers, and Internet users by imposing anticompetitive policies that reduced quality and increased prices.
A second phase of the trial to determine remedies for Google’s conduct will occur later.
Tennessee joins the lead attorneys general of Virginia, New York, and California, and DOJ, along with the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Washington, and West Virginia.
Read the decision here.