ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) — An expert witness called on behalf of Google asserted Thursday that the tech giant lacks power to control the advertising market as contended by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Google does not have monopoly power,” said Mark A. Israel, an economist and president of Compass Lexecon, an economics consulting firm. Called as an expert witness by lawyers for Google, Israel took issue with the U.S. Department of Justice’s accusations that Google is controlling the ad market and stifling competition.
“It is not in a position to dictate the market,” he testified.
But the DOJ contends that Google did exactly that, to the detriment of others in the industry. The antitrust trial currently underway before U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Bill Clinton appointee, could determine whether Google remains the dominant player in web ads.
“Competition in the ad tech space was broken, for reasons that were neither accidental nor inevitable,” the DOJ said in court filings. “One industry behemoth, Google, has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers.”
Google has long been considered a dominant force in advertising. In court filings, the Justice Department notes that by 2015, Google’s publisher ad server had reached a 90% market share.
Called by Google attorneys on the 14th day of trial, Israel contradicted the government’s assertions, specifically objecting to the way the government defined the market. He said that the case fails to consider the impact of heavyweight competitors such as Amazon and Meta, along with other social media websites and apps. For advertisers, these are important alternatives, he said.
Google’s legal team has produced witnesses for various websites who indicate that they work with multiple ad exchanges and are not forced to use only Google’s ad suite.
Israel vigorously argued that this competition gives evidence of a robust market. But when a government attorney quizzed him about whether the advertising tools of Facebook or TikTok would fulfill the display-advertisement needs of a publisher such as The New York Times, Israel said, “probably not.”.
During cross examination, a government attorney also questioned Israel’s credibility. Previously, Israel worked as an expert witness at a trial in federal trial in Massachusetts.
In that case, United States v. American Airlines Group, the judge overseeing the case specifically called out Israel in a ruling, writing, “In his lengthy testimony, Dr. Israel also demonstrated a misunderstanding and misapplication of antitrust concepts.” It added that Israel had “rendered opinions based on false assumptions.”
The Google case was effectively done by the end of Thursday with one task left unfinished — the completion of a deposition being read into the record. Afterward, the Justice Department is considering whether to present a rebuttal, according to Julia Tarver Wood, senior litigation counsel for the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Justice Department attorneys have asked the court to order the divestiture of Google’s Ad Manager suite — including both Google’s publisher ad server and Google’s ad exchange — and to enjoin the firm from continuing to engage in what it calls anticompetitive practices.