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US District Judge Leonie Brinkema found Google guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market." Here's a PDF of the ruling, via The Verge. It's the conclusion of a case brought by the federal government and eight states over two years ago.
Though Google competes in dozens of categories—from manufacturing its own phones to providing "big iron" data to some of the world's biggest companies—advertising is arguably its most important business. Ads keep much of the web profitable and allow Google to provide its primary search engine for free, in addition to other services like Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc. According to Statista, Google reaped over 250 billion US dollars from advertising in 2024, and Google owns 80 percent of the search market worldwide.
The determination that Google is operating an illegal monopoly—the second such determination from the US DOJ in two years—could be devastating t
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