Google’s US antitrust trial comes to an end as both parties lay their closing arguments

Tech giant Google and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) have made their closing arguments for their landmark antitrust trial as they met one last time in Alexandria, Virginia.

As part of its closing argument, the DOJ claimed that Google abused its dominant position in the digital ad tech market by rigging the rules to favour its products and disadvantage competitors.

It claimed that the tech giant had monopolised three key segments of the ad tech ecosystem: publisher ad servers, advertiser networks, and ad exchanges. It also highlighted anti-competitive behaviour, such as restricting publishers’ pricing options through Unified Pricing Rules.

Google’s defence focused on arguing that the DOJ had a flawed definition of the market, which narrowly focused on open web display advertising and ignored competition in mobile, social media, and connected TV, where it faces rivals like Meta and Amazon.

It also claimed that its ad tech products were not monopolistic but part of a competitive landscape, and integrating its tools benefits advertisers and publishers by simplifying operations.

The tech giant dismissed the DOJ’s evidence as selectively chosen and claimed that the government’s case lacked substantive proof of anticompetitive harm. The DOJ criticised Google for failing to preserve evidence as it deleted chat messages that may have revealed anticompetitive intent.

While Google argued that the chats were informal and non-substantive, Judge Leonie Brinkema warned that the lack of chat records undermined its defence and called it “dangerous territory”, which could impact her decision-making.

During the closing arguments, the Judge also said that Google’s reliance on the Ohio v. Amex precedent doesn’t align well, despite being appealing at first, due to the differences between the one-to-one transactions in Amex and the dynamic auction environments in Google’s ad tech.

The DOJ also criticised Google for only calling one witness that wasn’t directly tied to its company, which it claimed showed a “weak defence” and lack of external support.

Judge Brinkema said a decision may not come before Q1 2025 but praised the quality of the arguments on both sides. If Google is ruled a monopoly, a second trial will determine the remedies.

The DOJ proposed measures to break Google’s search monopoly. One measure was requiring the tech giant to sell its Chrome web browser and preventing it from re-entering the browser market for five years.

It also seeks to block Google from signing exclusive default search engine contracts with companies like Apple and Samsung and wants court oversight of Android to prevent preferential treatment of Google’s services.

Google has criticised the proposals as overly disruptive and claimed that they would harm consumers, stifle innovation, and compromise user privacy and security. A number of experts have also raised concerns, suggesting that more should be done to reduce Google’s control over search ad revenue.

The story first appeared on Campaign's sister publication Performance Marketing World.