US and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC

The US Department of Justice and seventeen states (plaintiffs) retained BRG in an antitrust action against Google LLC (Google) in which they claimed that Google monopolized three digital advertising technology markets.

Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz served as a testifying expert on antitrust liability and harm in this case. She was engaged to assess whether the alleged conduct was exclusionary, harmed competition in the relevant antitrust markets, and ultimately resulted in harm to consumers.

Across two expert reports, deposition testimony, and testimony at trial, Dr. Abrantes-Metz found that Google engaged in exclusionary conduct that protected from competition:

• Google’s advertising exchange (AdX), thereby allowing Google to develop and maintain market power in the ad exchange market and causing harm to market participants.
• Google’s publisher ad server (DFP), thereby allowing Google to maintain market power in the publisher ad server market and causing harm to market participants.
• Google’s advertiser ad network (Google Ads), thereby allowing Google to maintain market power in the advertiser ad network market and causing harm to market participants.

This exclusionary conduct led to higher prices, fewer transactions, and diminished product innovation. In addition, Dr. Abrantes-Metz concluded that it was reasonable to expect that Google’s exclusionary conducted harmed consumers of online content by reducing the ability of web content producers to monetize their content. As a result, producers would be expected to create less, and lower-quality, content.

On April 17, a federal judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found: “Google has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market, and has unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX) in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.”

The case is moving forward into the remedy phase.

BRG Case Main Team: Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz, Dr. Albert Metz, Dr. Steven Sexton, Laura Brown Ildefonso, Dr. Cirrus Foroughi, Sean Golz, and Sanskar Bista.