ALBAWABA - The U.S. government has asked a federal judge to break up Google's online advertising business because it doesn't believe the company can police itself or make real changes.
The request came on Friday, when government lawyers made their final arguments in a big antitrust case against Google's advertising technology, which is used by many websites to sell and manage digital ad space.
The Department of Justice and a number of U.S. states are suing Google for illegally controlling the online ad market for more than ten years, saying that the tech giant had control over every important part of the system. The lawsuit says that Google runs both the platforms that let websites auction off ad space and the marketplace where people buy and sell ads. This gives Google a lot of power over the demand for ads and their prices.
Gail Slater, the Assistant Attorney General, said on X, "This problem needs to be fixed." We think the best solution is to break up Google's monopoly and let real competition happen.
Google said the plan was too much government control and that breaking up its advertising ecosystem would hurt the digital economy. The company says that its ad tools make things more efficient and creative, and it says that separating its businesses is not possible from a technical point of view.
This is the second big antitrust case against Alphabet this year. A judge turned down a similar request from the Justice Department in September to separate Google's search engine from its other products.
The case is part of a larger federal effort to bring back competition in the tech sector, which hasn't had many big wins so far.
