Professor Shubha Ghosh, director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute, spoke with Ars Technica about the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) monopoly trial against Google that challenges its ad tech dominance.
In terms of potential remedies sought by the DOJ, Ghosh told Ars that “if this case goes against Google as the last one did, it could set the stage for splitting it into separate search and advertising companies.”
In the DOJ’s complaint, prosecutors argued that it “is critical to restore competition in these markets by enjoining Google’s anticompetitive practices, unwinding Google’s anticompetitive acquisitions, and imposing a remedy sufficient both to deny Google the fruits of its illegal conduct and to prevent further harm to competition in the future.”
Ghosh said that undoing Google’s acquisitions could lead to Google no longer representing both advertisers’ and sellers’ interests in each ad auction—instead requiring Google to either pick a side or perhaps involve a broker.