DOJ’s Latest Case Against Google Is Intricate But Important

Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general of antitrust for the US Department of Justice, speaks during a news conference on January 24. Photo by Bloomberg.

Jessica Lessin

Over my career as a tech reporter, regulators have sued or threatened to sue Google for exerting monopoly power in its ads business so many times it’s hard to keep track.

Today the U.S. Department of Justice and eight states filed the fifth challenge by U.S. officials against the company, building on a case several states filed back in 2020.

This one is a doozy and I don’t recommend wading in unless you are familiar with the intricacies of header bidding and DSPs and a bunch of very technical ad-targeting practices that were a significant and bleeding-edge part of the digital economy back in the day and are now, well, meh. While Google’s display ad business has grown, any publisher that is heavily dependent on it is no longer in business—or won’t be much longer.