By David Shepardson and Jody Godoy
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google will face a trial in September on antitrust enforcers’ proposals to make it sell off part of its advertising technology business to address the company’s dominance over tools used by online publishers to sell ads.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, set the trial date on Friday after hearing from Google and the U.S. Department of Justice about potential remedies in the case.
Both sides are expected to file detailed proposals on Monday.
The DOJ will seek to have Google sell off its ad exchange and publisher ad server business, in a process expected to take several years, said DOJ attorney Julia Tarver Wood.
Google lawyer Karen Dunn said the company supported behavioral remedies – such as making real-time bids available to competitors – but that prosecutors cannot legally pursue a bid to force Google to sell parts of its business.
Such a move would also harm internet users and encounter a lack of interested buyers, she said.
Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital ad inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology lets news publishers and other online content providers make money by selling ads.
Brinkema ruled in April that Google unlawfully tied publishers’ use of its ad exchange to use of its ad server, and enacted anticompetitive policies that were “not in its publisher customers’ best interests.” The conduct harmed competition, and hurt publishers and ultimately internet users, she said.
Google has previously explored selling its ad exchange to appease European antitrust regulators, Reuters reported in September.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York and David Shepardson in Alexandria, Virginia; Editing by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)
