Washington, D.C. — Following the first day of trial proceedings in the U.S. v. Google ad tech case in the Eastern District of Virginia, Case No. 1:23-cv-00108, where the Department of Justice is suing Google for illegally maintaining monopoly power across the digital advertising industry, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“On day one of the trial, the Antitrust Division laid out its case exposing how Google rigs every layer of the open web ad stack to benefit itself while making competition impossible,” said Lee Hepner, Sr. Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, who attended the trial in person. “As the dominant buyer, seller, and broker of digital ads across the open web, Google siphons extraordinary profits from the market while publishers, marketers and advertising exchanges suffer. One rival ad exchange experimented with cutting its fee for digital ads to zero percent on the auction in an attempt to cut into Google’s business, yet still failed to make a dent in Google’s durable market share.”

“Google achieved its numerous monopolies not by having the best product, but by acquiring its competitors and controlling the entire ecosystem,” Hepner added. “Google’s various alleged monopolies come at the expense of innovation, competition and the fair flow of information across our society.”

Day 1 of the Google Ad Tech trial saw opening statements from Senior Litigation Counsel Julia Tarver Wood of the Justice Department, and Karen Dunn on behalf of Google. Four witnesses from across the digital advertising industry were called on the first day of trial: Tim Wolfe (Senior Vice President of Revenue at Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the US), Andrew Casale (President and CEO of Index Exchange, a potential rival to Google’s dominant Ad Exchange), Joshua Lowcock (President of advertising agency Quad), and James Avery (Founder and CEO of Kevel, a publisher ad server and potential rival to Google’s dominant publishing ad server, DFP).

The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, along with a coalition of states, filed its lawsuit against Google in January 2023, targeting the company’s alleged monopolization of the digital advertising market. The DOJ claims that Google’s dominance stems from a series of acquisitions, including DoubleClick in 2008, and anti-competitive practices that have allowed it to control the entire ad tech ecosystem—effectively locking out rivals and forcing publishers and advertisers to use its services. The trial began in September 2024 in the Eastern District of Virginia.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.