The U.S. Department of Justice wields its sword against monopolies: Google's advertising business may face forced divestiture

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, the U.S. Department of Justice has submitted documents to the federal court, demanding that Google (GOOGL.US) must divest two core assets from its online advertising business—the advertising exchange platform AdX and the publisher ad server. This forced divestiture requirement stems from an antitrust ruling made last month by Judge Leoni Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which found that Google engaged in illegal monopolistic behavior in the digital advertising exchange market and the ad server field.

The Department of Justice emphasized in court documents that Google has formed a "self-preferential" closed-loop ecosystem through long-term abuse of its market dominance. Specifically, Google is accused of providing special privileges for its own advertising products, including preferential access to advertising exchange platform data and artificially restricting competitors' technical access, forcing advertisers and website publishers to heavily rely on its service system.

Regarding remedial measures, the Department of Justice explicitly rejected Google's proposed "technical compatibility commitment" plan. This plan had suggested allowing AdX to achieve data interoperability with competitor systems and establishing a three-year compliance supervision period. However, the Department of Justice pointed out that such commitments do not fundamentally resolve the monopolistic structure issue, stating that "only by divesting illegally obtained monopolistic assets can market competition order be restored." The document particularly emphasized that the ad server, as the "central system" for website ad management, is deeply tied to the advertising exchange platform, constituting a core monopolistic tool that must be forcibly divested in phases.

In response to the Department of Justice's demands, Google has not publicly responded with a specific plan. Google proposed that compliance could be achieved through technical openness and third-party supervision, such as committing to open the AdX platform to all bidding systems without discrimination and accepting real-time monitoring by an independent agency for three years.

This case traces back to the antitrust lawsuit initiated by the Department of Justice against Google in 2023. Last month, Judge Brinkema made a key ruling, finding three illegal facts regarding Google in the advertising technology market: restricting competitors' access to ad servers through exclusive agreements; manipulating the ad auction mechanism to profit from its own products; and abusing market dominance to suppress price competition.

It is noteworthy that this case is related to another lawsuit against Google's search monopoly. The Department of Justice is also pushing for the divestiture of the Chrome browser to break Google's monopoly position at the search entry point. Currently, Judge Brinkema has scheduled a hearing for September, during which both parties will engage in direct debate over remedial measures.

In this regard, analysts in the advertising technology industry pointed out that the separation of ad servers and exchange platforms could reshape the digital advertising value chain, giving rise to more neutral advertising infrastructure service providers. However, some legal experts warn that forcibly separating a complex technical ecosystem may face execution challenges and that care must be taken to avoid collateral damage to small and medium-sized enterprises that rely on Google's technology during the divestiture process.

Currently, the global digital advertising market is closely monitoring the progress of this case. Jurisdictions such as the European Union and the United Kingdom have also launched investigations into Google's advertising business, and the ruling in this case may provide important precedent references for multinational technology antitrust enforcement