Google’s ad dominance at the centre of its next big antitrust showdown

Google is heading for the next showdown in a concerted international antitrust campaign to break the tech giant’s decades-long dominance of the digital advertising market, this time with the future of its $20bn ad tech business at stake. Fresh from its antitrust victory against Google over online search, the US Department of Justice will once again face its parent company Alphabet in court next week over allegations it exerts monopolistic control of digital advertising. The lawsuit dates to January 2023, when DoJ antitrust head Jonathan Kanter and a group of US states accused Google of using “anti-competitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance” as a major intermediary in ad tech — the automated marketplace that buys, sells and places video and picture adverts online.