Ultimately, Brinkema found that Google’s anticompetitive acts substantially harmed “Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.”
For Google, the ruling likely hits hard, despite a couple of notable wins. For one, Brinkema ruled that the DOJ did not prove Google has a monopoly in a third market “for open-web display advertiser ad networks.” Additionally, Google will not face sanctions for deleting chat histories that could have influenced her decision in the case.
“Chat deletions occurred when employees discussed substantive topics at issue in this litigation and continued after the federal government began an antitrust investigation into Google’s conduct,” Brinkema noted. And Google’s evasive tactics also included executives marking emails as “privileged” that “clearly did not involve privileged communications,” the judge said.
However, because the DOJ had enough evidence and testimony for Brinkema to find Google liable, the judge agreed with the outcome in the Google search trial and declined to sanction Google for the “adverse interference.”
“As in Google Search, the Court’s decision not to sanction ‘should not be understood as condoning Google’s failure to preserve chat evidence,'” Brinkema said.
While the DOJ largely claims the win, Google is apparently not considering this a loss yet. In a statement provided to Ars, Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, confirmed that Google plans to appeal.
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Mulholland said. “The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options, and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable, and effective.”