Google’s Antitrust Troubles Demonstrate the Need for a Digital Regulator

By: Mark MacCarthy (TechTank/Brookings)

In December 2023, Google lost an antitrust case related to its app store, brought forward by Epic Games. A jury determined that Google had “willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power” in the Android app distribution market. After concluding a series of hearings on the matter in August, Judge James Donato is now positioned to establish appropriate remedies. He appears prepared to “tear down the barriers” that prevent rival app stores from competing and challenging Google’s dominant hold over Android app distribution.

In August 2023, Google also lost a search monopoly case brought by the Department of Justice. Federal District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly” in the general search services market. According to the decision, Google preserved its monopoly not by offering the best search engine but by purchasing favorable positions on all key distribution platforms through which consumers access search engines, including $20 billion in payments to Apple in 2022 for default placements on its Safari browser. These exclusive contracts allowed Google to manipulate text ad auctions, raising ad prices without facing any meaningful competitive restraint. Judge Mehta has requested comments on potential remedies from the Department of Justice and state attorneys general by the end of the year and plans to issue his final decision by August 2025.

A new antitrust case against Google, centered on its ad tech operations, commenced in September 2024. The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general accuse Google of leveraging its ownership of dominant companies across the ad tech infrastructure to stifle competition and impose monopoly prices on online publishers and advertisers. Google owns a leading provider of advertising services to publishers and another dominant firm that offers services on the advertiser side. Additionally, it controls the leading marketplace where publishers and advertisers interact to set prices for online ads.

In a separate complaint on the same issue, a group of state attorneys general argued that such an interlocking set of monopolies would be inconceivable in other markets: “Imagine if the financial markets were controlled by a single monopoly firm, like Goldman Sachs, which then also owned the NYSE, the largest financial exchange, and then traded on that exchange to benefit itself, eliminate competition, and impose a monopoly tax on billions of daily transactions.”

Rather than pursuing a behavioral remedy to protect ad tech competitors in each of these market segments, the Department of Justice has asked the court to “order the divestiture” of Google’s publisher ad server, which it acquired from DoubleClick in 2008, and its dominant ad exchange, along with “any additional structural relief as necessary to address anticompetitive harm.”

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