PubMatic sues Google in Virginia, seeking billions in damages over alleged ad tech monopoly abuse

Alphabet’s Google is facing yet another lawsuit over its dominance in digital advertising after exchange operator PubMatic took the tech giant to court, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the ad technology ￰0￱ case, filed on Monday in federal court in Virginia, seeks billions of dollars in damages and is the latest addition to lawsuits by an advertising exchange in recent ￰1￱ comes on the heels of a landmark April ruling in which a judge found Google liable for maintaining unlawful monopolies in ad servers and ad ￰2￱ takes on the giant PubMatic, an ad exchange whose clients include Elon Musk’s X, said it had spent years competing against what it sees as a rigged system.

“It felt like for many years no matter how well we innovated there was a barrier holding us back,” Rajeev Goel, PubMatic’s CEO said in an interview. “That barrier wasn’t the limits of our ￰3￱ was Google’s illegal ￰4￱ time we adapted or innovated, Google found new ways to stack the deck.” The lawsuit alleges that Google gave itself unfair advantages in auctions for digital ad space, limiting access for rivals and reducing the revenues available to ￰5￱ had once been a takeover target for Google in 2011, but the search giant instead opted to buy rival ￰6￱ company now says its legal action is not only about recovering damages but also about restoring fairness to the market.

“The company’s lawsuit isn’t just about money, but making sure online advertising markets work,” Goel ￰7￱ rulings against Google set the stage In April, ￰8￱ Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the markets for ad servers and exchanges, siding with the ￰9￱ of Justice and several states. A separate trial beginning this month will determine what remedies Google must ￰10￱ Justice Department has argued that Google should be forced to divest its AdX exchange and make its technology fully interoperable with competitors. Google, however, insists that such a breakup is unnecessary and has proposed instead to allow outside monitoring of its systems for three years while improving compatibility with rival ￰11￱ PubMatic lawsuit follows a similar action filed last month by OpenX Technologies, another advertising exchange, which also accuses Google of suppressing ￰12￱ these cases, Google faces a raft of lawsuits from state governments, publishers, and advertisers alleging that its dominance has distorted the market and harmed ￰13￱ has also entered hot water in Europe, as reported by ￰14￱ EU slapped a €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion) fine on the search leader for what it claims to be an abuse of its dominance, as Google favored its own ad exchanges over others, giving them a competitive ￰15￱ for the ad tech industry Digital advertising accounts for a sizeable chunk of Alphabet’s revenues, and a forced sell-off of its ad exchange could alter its business ￰16￱ say that losing control of AdX would not only weaken Google’s grip on the market but also open the door for rivals such as PubMatic, OpenX, Amazon, and The Trade Desk to claim more market ￰17￱ regulators, the case represents a test of whether structural remedies, breaking up parts of a dominant firm, can be effectively implemented in digital ￰18￱ DOJ’s push for divestiture signals a tougher stance than the behavioral remedies that big tech companies have typically agreed to in the ￰19￱ Difference Wire helps crypto brands break through and dominate headlines fast