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Google may get a lump of coal from the government this year.
Hey, sometimes ice writes itself.
In September, Google appeared in court to face allegations that it operates an illegal monopoly on the online advertising industry.
Google spent three weeks defending itself in an Alexandria, Virginia, courtroom presided over by federal judge Leonie Brinkema, who is now tasked with deciding (her decision is expected early next year) whether Google used its market power to stifle competition and maintain its dominance.
The Justice Department says, “Uh, yeah.”
Google says, “No.”
If you want more specific information about their arguments, listen to this podcast with our guest Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence at Check My Ads, who has relocated to Alexandria for the duration of the trial to watch the courtroom proceedings each day. 🎙️
AdExchanger was there too, sitting in the gallery for the first week of the deposition, furiously scribbling notes in pencil in a spiral notebook, as no electronics or recording devices of any kind are allowed in the courtroom.
As the advertising industry awaits Judge Brinkema’s decision, get up to speed with AdExchanger’s in-depth coverage.
Thanks to the DOJ, we now know what Google really thought about Header Bidding
Nothing compares to the pile of evidence that is uncovered during a trial.
Although some of the documents released in the US vs. Google was heavily redacted and other evidence remained under seal until the trial began, there were still thousands of pages of depositions, court filings, internal emails and trawler reports — including plenty of juicy tidbits. .
Like this nugget from Google’s 2015 internal DFP presentation: “Without a first look,” Google wrote, “we’re left with inventory that other buyers viewed and didn’t want to pay for.”
Yes, first sight was a big plus!
Google is fighting not to let down ad tech executives in its upcoming antitrust lawsuit
About two weeks before the Sept. 9 trial, Google filed a motion to exclude testimony about its alleged anticompetitive behavior from witnesses who are not economists or antitrust experts.
If Google were successful, people like Index Exchange CEO Andrew Casale, former AppNexis CEO Brian O’Kelley and Kevel CEO James Avery would be barred from taking the stand or having their testimony read in court.
Google’s proposal was rejected on September 4.
Project Cheat Sheet: An overview of all of Google’s secret internal projects as revealed by the DOJ
What do Hercule Poirot, Ben Bernanke, Star Wars and CS Lewis have in common?
If you’re an ad tech nerd, you’ll know the answer immediately.
All served as inspiration for codenames associated with various internal Google projects, including several related to Google’s countermeasures for header bidding. Many were first revealed as part of the Justice Department’s original complaint against Google.
AdExchanger attended the first week of the trial in person in Alexandria, and we have the calluses to prove it.
One of our readers wrote to us that our daily letters from the courtroom were “the best we’ve really had.”
So pop the popcorn and relive the action:
Publishers feel they are being seen in Google Ad Tech Antitrust Trial
The process, meanwhile, has been a collective catharsis for publishers, and all the pubs AdExchanger spoke to said they felt vindicated – but far from shocked – by the revelation on the stand.
“I wish I was more surprised by some of these emails and snippets,” Justin Wohl, CRO of Snopes.com and TV Tropes, told AdExchanger. “Experience working with the Google advantage for almost 10 years has predisposed me to fully expect this.”
Buried Justice Department evidence reveals how Google dealt with the Commerce Department
Although the trial focused on Google’s supply-side business and its publisher ad server, the DOJ also uncovered evidence that painted a new picture of how Google interacts with and competes with its main DSP rival, The Trade Desk.
Consider, for example, this 2020 email exchange between Sissie Hsiao, then Google’s vice president of content advertising, video advertising and in-app advertising, and a colleague at Google, in which she recounts a conversation she had with Dave Pickles, then CTO of The Trade Desk .
Hsiao asked Pickles his perspective on what it’s like to work with Chrome engineers, to which he apparently replied, “Chrome PMs are drunk on energy.”
Spicy quotes to quote from the Google Ad Tech antitrust lawsuit
The court itself was also full of chatter. Read this piece for a list of some of the most notable quotes from three weeks of testimony, including this one:
In 2019, Stephanie Layser, now with AWS, was vice president of advertising technology at News Corp. At the time, she wrote an email to Google and asked for a meeting to discuss her deep concerns about the introduction of uniform pricing rules. In a meeting held with two female Googlers, she was told she was “emotional and unproductive”.
The Google Ad Tech antitrust case is over — and what’s next
Google relented on September 30, and the case was over, just three weeks after it began.
Both sides were given until Nov. 4 to submit their revised findings of fact, a legal document that outlines the essential facts of the case.
Closing arguments were scheduled just before the Thanksgiving break on November 25.
What was it like to testify in the Google Ad Tech antitrust trial? We asked the CEO of Kevel
In this Q&A, James Avery, CEO and founder of Kevel (formerly Adzerk), reflects on his experience testifying during a trial. He took a stand on the first day.
“I never thought I’d have the opportunity to really say my piece like this,” Avery told AdExchanger.
Adzerk tried – and failed – to compete with Google in the ad server market. The company later changed its name to Kevel and was forced to shift its business model from the open web to retail media.
Google and the Justice Department recap their cases in the countdown to closing arguments
Google and the government filed their respective findings of fact on Nov. 4 as planned, including detailed retellings of the case summarizing the evidence and allegations.
These documents are another tool that Judge Brinkema will use as a reference in her decision making.
What Judge Brinkema zeroed in on during the closing arguments in US v. Google
And on Nov. 25, lawyers from both sides were given 90 minutes to present their final case to Judge Brinkema before she left to mull over the evidence and write her decision.
The judge had the opportunity to interrupt and ask questions during closing arguments—and she had some great ones.
At one point, she interrupted Karen Dunn, Google’s lead attorney, who was explaining why a certain 2018 Supreme Court decision, Ohio v. Amex also applies in this case.
In Ohio v. Amex SCOTUS found that a court in an antitrust case must consider the network effects that result from a transaction. Ad technology tools, Dunn argued, operate in a single, two-sided marketplace with buyers on one side and sellers on the other. Behavior can end up looking anti-competitive when only the impact on one party is considered, which is what Google says the DOJ did when it focused only on publishers.
But Judge Brinkema didn’t seem convinced. She said she initially liked Amex’s argument, but as time went on she became less convinced of its relevance here.
“I’ve read the Amex case more times than I probably should have,” she said. “At the beginning of the case it was very attractive … but now it seems to me that we are dealing with a completely different set-up.”
And now we await her decision, which is expected early next year.
🎙️ That was a lot, but if you still haven’t had enough, warm up those AirPods. We also have podcasts.