Google's remedy phase explained: DOJ wants its offerings - and where the judge might land

"The DOJ and Google spent 10 (and a half) days arguing over how to fix the tech platform's illegal monopolization of how online ads are bought and sold as well as the marketplace where it all takes place. Think of this as the penalty phase - not to decide if Google is guilty of the things publishers and ad execs spent years accusing it of, but what the punishment should be."

"But it doesn't stop there. The Justice Department also wants the tech company to open-source the code that decides where ads land, a move aimed at breaking publishers' dependence on Google's infrastructure. If that doesn't do the trick, the ad server is next to be divested. Behavioral remedies are in the mix too, but they read more like guardrails - there to keep Google from stitching its ad tech monopoly back together under a new guise."

The DOJ sought structural remedies to dismantle Google's dominance in online ad buying, targeting AdX, open-sourcing the ad-placement code, and divesting the ad server if necessary. Behavioral remedies were proposed as supplemental guardrails to prevent reassembly of the ad-tech stack. The recent hearing focused on remedy choices rather than liability, framing the dispute as a penalty phase over how to change incentives that produced the monopoly. The DOJ emphasized that unchanged incentives, including within AdWords, risk perpetuating anti-competitive outcomes and urged expanded AdX access across inventory types. The court must weigh divestiture against behavioral constraints to prevent future consolidation.

Read at Digiday