Letter to DOJ: Break Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly and Request Restitution to News Publishers for Lost Revenue
The Center for Journalism & Liberty at the Open Markets Institute, alongside Public Knowledge and Rebuild Local News, submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) urging them to strengthen their initial proposed remedies to break Google’s monopoly over advertising technologies (ad tech), a digital market that intermediates ad sales mainly between news publishers and advertisers on the open web.
This follows the April 2025 ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia confirming that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by illegally monopolizing the ad tech market, as well as Sections 1 and 2 of the same act by unlawfully tying its products to maintain its monopoly.
“For years, Google squeezed monopoly rents out of news publishers using their ad tech platform, unfairly diverted ad dollars away from rival ad tech providers that would have offered publishers a better deal, and undermined the economics of news to the wider detriment of both the market and our democracy. Google’s illegal monopoly contributed to the loss of thousands of local newsrooms and journalism jobs across the country, not to mention the rest of the world, while enriching Google’s coffers. Now is the time for reckoning, and restitution,” said CJL Director Dr. Courtney Radsch.
Ahead of the remedies hearings scheduled for September 22, 2025, the letter advocates for the DOJ to consider the significant harm that Google’s monopoly over digital advertising has inflicted on the news market as a key argument to defend and improve two specific remedies:
Set enforceable deadlines for the divestiture of Google’s publisher ad server (DoubleClick for Publishers, DFP). Currently, the DOJ is proposing a “phased divestiture” of DFP that may lead to a separation of DFP from Google. However, we argue that this phased divestiture should secure a full spin-off of DFP with clear and enforceable deadlines. Absent this approach, a structural remedy risks being delayed indefinitely. Without a divestiture, Google’s continued ownership of DFP would preserve its ability to manipulate ad prices for news publishers, even as Google directly competes for the same ad dollars through its search engine (another illegal monopoly) and YouTube properties.
Request disgorgement of Google’s illegally gained profits to complement the creation of an escrow proposal. Google’s ad tech business doubled from $15 billion to $30 billion between 2014 and 2024. At least 20% of each year’s revenues are pure monopoly rent charged by Google’s ad exchange. The DOJ has proposed an escrow fund funded by some of Google’s publisher-side ad tech revenues to partially cover publishers’ DFP switching costs. While this remedy rightly recognizes the costs imposed by switching, it is insufficient relief given that publishers were deprived of their fair share of ad tech revenues for years due to Google’s illegal conduct. The DOJ should also require Google to provide restitution to publishers for some of the revenue lost as a result of Google’s illegal control of the ad tech market through an independently administered fund. To effectively deny Google the fruits of its statutory violation, disgorgement of illegally gained profits serves both as a deterrent for future anticompetitive conduct and as restorative relief to those harmed. Courts can and have afforded such relief under the Sherman Act.
“We urge the DOJ to consider disgorgement of Google’s ill-gotten profits to be used not only within the escrow framework but also to provide relief and restitution to publishers harmed by Google’s monopoly regime through an independently administered fund,” said Radsch.
CJL has extensively covered Google’s antitrust cases (Search and Ad Tech), and it will continue to deliver analysis on the Google Ad Tech case here.