‘It doesn’t look good’: Google’s widely criticized defense against its ad tech monopoly

Google this week concluded its defense in a U.S. Department of Justice ad tech monopoly lawsuit after a week of witness testimony that experts said seemed unreliable.

The tech giant began its defense by showing a much-derided chart that Google CEO Scott Sheffer called a “spaghetti football,” purporting to depict a seamless industry thriving on Google’s ad tech platform, but most importantly “confusing” everyone and perhaps even helping to disprove this thesis. – said Open Markets Institute policy analyst Karina Montoya.

“The effect of this image may have backfired because it also showed that Google is ubiquitous in digital advertising,” Montoya reports. “The DOJ hearing untangled the spaghetti ball to show only ad tech products used specifically by publishers and advertisers on the open web.”

One witness, Marco Hardie, Google’s current industry executive, was even removed from the stand and his testimony was deemed “tainted” and irrelevant by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, Montoya reported. But perhaps the most heated exchange over the witness’s credibility came during the Justice Department’s questioning of Mark Israel, a key expert that Google is relying on to challenge the Justice Department’s definition of the market.

Google’s case hinges largely on whether Brinkema agrees that the Justice Department’s definition of the market is too narrow and allegedly outdated, focusing on display advertising on the open web, as opposed to a broader market that includes display advertising that appears in apps or social media. But experts monitoring the trial suggested Brinkema could question Israel’s credibility after aggressive questioning by Justice Department lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum.

According to Big Tech on Trial, which posted the exchange on X (formerly Twitter), the manner of Teitelbaum’s questioning was seen as “a striking and effective undermining of Mark Israel’s credibility as a witness.”

During his testimony, Israel told Brinkema that Google’s share of the U.S. display ad market was just 25 percent, minimizing Google’s alleged dominance while emphasizing that Google faced “intense competition” from other Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Meta and TikTok, in this broader market, said Open Markets Institute policy analyst Karina Montoya.

During the hearing, Teitelbaum called Israel “a serial ‘expert’ for companies facing antitrust challenges” who “always states that companies have ‘clarified’ their market definition,” Big Tech on Trial published in X. Teitelbaum even read quotes from previous cases “in which judges described” Israel’s “expert” testimony as “unreliable” and “misunderstood antitrust law.”

Israel was accused by former judges of issuing their opinions “on false assumptions,” according to USvGoogleAds, a website run by digital advertising watchdog Check My Ads and advertising industry partners. Specifically in the case of Google’s ad technology, Teitelbaum noted that Israel omitted ad spending data to seemingly manipulate one of its charts.

“It’s not looking good,” the watchdog’s website said.

Perhaps most damaging, Teitelbaum asked Israel to confirm that “80 percent of its income comes from producing these types of reports,” implying that Israel apparently depended on salaries from companies like Jet Blue and Kroger-Albertsons, and even earlier than Google during the search monopoly lawsuit – to muddy the waters on market definition. Lee Hepner, an antitrust lawyer with the American Economic Liberties Project, posted on X that Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter has become distrustful of serial experts who allegedly sow distrust in the judicial system.

“Let’s be clear, this is not going to end well,” Kanter said during a speech at a competition law conference this month. “We are already seeing growing distrust of expertise by courts and law enforcement.”

“The Best Witnesses Money Can Buy”

In addition to experts and Google employees who supported Google’s proposed findings of fact and legal conclusions, Google asked Courtney Caldwell – the CEO of a small company that once received a grant from Google and appears in Google marketing materials – to support claims that the DOJ victory could harm small businesses, Big Tech on Trial reported.

Google’s direct investigation of Caldwell was “basically just a Google ad,” Big Tech on Trial said, while the Check My Ads website suggested that Google mostly just used “the best witnesses money can buy, but still It didn’t convince them very well.” far.”

According to Big Tech on Trial, Google is taking a “light touch” in its defense, refusing to use a pound-for-pound approach to refute the Justice Department’s position. By taking this approach, Google can seemingly ignore any DOJ argument that doesn’t fit the picture. Google wants Brinkema to accept the organic growth of the Google advertising empire, not its anti-competitive construction to exclude rivals through mergers and acquisitions.

While the Justice Department wants the judge to see “a Google-only pipeline through the heart of its ad tech stack, denying non-Google rivals the same access,” Google argues that it has merely “designed a set of products that work effectively with others and attract a valuable base customers.”

The main problem for Google’s defense appears to be evidence from its own internal documents. Allison Schiff of AdExchanger, who is monitoring the trial, pulled the juiciest quotes from the courtroom in which Google employees appear to show an intention to monopolize the ad tech industry.

Evidence that Brinkeman may find hard to ignore includes former Google display advertising president David Rosenblatt’s 2008 statement confirming that it would “take a leap of faith” to get people to switch advertising platforms because of the extremely high switching costs. Rosenblatt also suggested in a 2009 presentation that Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick for Publishers would make Google’s ad technology more like the New York Stock Exchange, allowing Google to monitor every ad sale and doing for display advertising “what Google did for search.” There is also a 2010 email in which YouTube’s current CEO, Neal Mohan, recommended that Google overtake the display advertising market by “parking” the rival with the “most traction.”

The Department of Justice will then subpoena witnesses to rebut the testimony. Montoya said Brinkema will hear closing arguments and announce his sentence in December.