ALEXANDRIA, Va.-- The judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over technology that matches buyers and sellers of online advertising must choose whether to believe what Google executives wrote or what they have said on the witness stand.The Justice Department is wrapping up its antitrust case against Google this week at a federal courtroom in Virginia.
The federal government and a coalition of states contend Google has built and maintained a monopoly on the technology used to buy and sell the ads that appear to consumers when they browse the web.Google counters that the government is improperly focused on a very narrow slice of advertising — essentially the rectangular banner ads that appear on the top and along the right side of a publisher's web page — and that within the broader online advertising market, Google is beset on all sides from competition that includes social media companies and streaming TV services.Many of the government's key witnesses have been Google managers and executives, who have often sought to disavow what they have written in emails, chats and company presentations.This was especially true Thursday during the testimony of Jonathan Bellack, a product manager at Google who wrote an email that government lawyers believe is particularly damning.In 2016, Bellack wrote an email wondering, "Is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE,” the New York Stock Exchange.
For the Justice Department, Bellack's description is almost a perfect summary of its case.It alleges that Google's tech dominates both the market that online publishers use to sell available ad space on their web pages, and the tech used by huge networks of advertisers to buy ad space.
Google even dominates the “ad exchanges” that serve as a middleman to match buyer and seller, the lawsuit alleges.As a result of Google's dominance in all parts of the transactio...