Now, the Justice Department is hoping for a twofer as it goes to trial against Google once more this week — this time, in a separate antitrust case that could potentially reform some of the most basic economics of running a website. The long-awaited showdown beginning Monday will see the US government and more than a dozen states challenging another major source of Google’s economic might: its massive advertising business.
Google competes against hundreds of companies that offer their own ad exchanges or ad tech tools, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok to name a few, according to its filings. Advertisers can choose whether to use Google’s tools, or rival tools, or even divert ad spend away from websites and to other formats and platforms that don’t involve Google’s ad tech, such as on Instagram or Netflix.