The ad tech trial many thought would go nowhere has done the unthinkable: it delivered. Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google illegally monopolized the digital advertising market - validating years of industry gripes. The court found that Google violated U.S. antitrust laws by monopolizing the markets for publisher ad servers with DoubleClick for Publishers, and ad exchanges, via AdX, by tying the pair. However, Google was not found guilty of monopolizing the advertiser ad network market.
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, said in May that web publishing is not dying. Nick Fox, VP of Search at Google, said in May that the web is thriving. But in a court document filed by Google on late Friday, Google's lawyers wrote, "The fact is that today, the open web is already in rapid decline."