After the court recognized Google as a monopolist in the online advertising market, a trial began to determine the measures necessary to rectify the situation. The IT giant proposed its own plan to improve the segment, which does not provide for the division of the company’s business. In response, the US Department of Justice presented the court with its own version, according to which Google must abandon its AdX advertising exchange and DFP advertising campaign management service.
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The Justice Department’s plan would require Google to sell two key parts of its advertising business: the AdX ad exchange and the DoubleClick for Publishers ad campaign management service, now known as Google Ad Manager. Google itself had previously asked the court to limit itself to requiring a number of targeted changes to its business strategy, without resorting to dividing it.
In its proposal to sell AdX, the Justice Department cites an April court ruling that AdX “makes it difficult for customers on both sides of the ad exchange market to switch to competing platforms.” The Justice Department insists that Google should sell AdX “as soon as possible.” At the same time, it proposes to force the exchange to work with competitors’ services. As an additional measure, the Justice Department proposes to ban Google from operating the ad exchange for 10 years.
As for Ad Manager/DFP, there is a “phased” divestment option. The Justice Department believes that Google should sell the service because it forces customers to use a product “they would not otherwise choose” and also pursues policies that are unpopular with users.
In the first phase, the DOJ proposes requiring Google to create an API that would allow it to integrate with other ad exchanges, as well as an export feature that would allow publishers to easily move their DFP data to other platforms. The next phase would require Google to open source the code it uses to run the final ad auctions, while prohibiting the company from “hosting or recreating” that code in any of its products, including DFP, Android, and Chrome. The final phase would require Google to hand over the remainder of DFP to an entity unrelated to the AdX buyer.
The DOJ also proposes requiring Google to share data obtained through DFP, saying the company should not use third-party data from YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android, or its search engine to gain an unfair competitive advantage.
It is quite natural that the measures proposed by the Ministry of Justice do not suit Google. In its statement, the IT giant is trying to convince the court that there is no need to split the business, stating that the AdX and DFP services were acquired without violating the law and that the company had no intention of violating antitrust law. It is noted that due to the specifics of advertising services, “alienation is not an easy matter”, since we are not talking about a simple transfer of the source code of AdX or DFP to the buyer. The company claims that in the event of alienation, it will be necessary to create new versions of AdX and DFP capable of operating outside the Google ecosystem. According to company representatives, this process will take at least five years.
«At the same time, this process will cause significant harm to AdX and DFP customers. Over the many years required to rebuild one or both services, developing new versions of the tools will require significant resources, including the limited number of programmers familiar with these systems and currently working on their support and development,” Google said in a statement.
To avoid a business split, Google is willing to agree to a ban on certain business practices. In addition, the company proposes to open up AdX bidding to competitors, eliminate uniform pricing rules, allow publishers to set different prices for different bidders, and implement other measures.