Closing arguments in their ad tech antitrust trial will start at 10AM that day. But for now, it’s a wrap.
The final day saw a couple of depositions from Google — including testimony from Ryan Pauley, chief revenue officer at Verge parent company Vox Media — plus a Daily Mail executive who returned in a short but heated DOJ rebuttal.
‘All roads lead back to Google,’ the government argued in the first two weeks of its ad tech antitrust trial.
Bloomberg reports that “a formal chargesheet” is being prepared by EU officials, taking issue with how it presents rivals on search services like Google Flights and Google Hotels.
Search is already under antitrust fire in the US, and those findings could lead to a big financial penalty under the DMA, although things could change before a final decision is due before April 2025.
I’ve been going to this extremely wonky and jargon-y trial almost every day, and I joined Decoder to translate the highlights so far. The trial — which is only accessible in-person from an Alexandria, VA courtroom — is in its second week. Google is expected to start calling witnesses any day now, once the Justice Department wraps its chief case.
In 2019, three years after the case began, the European Commission fined Google €1.5 billion after determining that it forced customers of its AdSense business to sign anticompetitive contracts. On appeal, the EU’s second highest court said it “upholds the majority of the findings” but annuls the fine. But don’t worry! The Commission can still appeal the decision ensuring another year or two of legal fees.
Karen Dunn, a partner at the law firm Paul Weiss, has been busy this week. It’s no wonder Virginia federal judge Leonie Brinkema told Dunn she could be on her way just after she opened Google’s defense against ad tech monopolization charges.
We’re moving through witnesses in the Google ad tech trial, including Stephanie Layser, a former consultant and News Corp advertising VP.
Layser bolstered the DOJ’s claim that Google Ad Manager (formerly Doubleclick For Publishers or DFP) dominates the market thanks to its links to AdX. “DFP is a 25 to 30 year old piece of technology. It’s slow and clunky,” Layser lamented. “It takes a long time to load on the page.”
