Court rejects request for forced sale of Google advertising platform... Adopt behavioral remedies

Court: “Just the forced sale lawsuit took several years”… Adopting remedies to prevent abuse of dominance

(San Francisco = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kwon Young-jeon = Google has escaped the crisis of forced sale of its Chrome web browser and the division of its advertising business.

Reuters and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 2nd (local time) that the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, dismissed the Justice Department's request for a forced sale of Google's online advertising auction platform 'AdX'.

AdX is an advertising exchange where advertisers and publishers who want to sell advertisements are connected in real time to buy and sell advertisements, and Google takes a 20% commission for each advertisement transaction.

Judge Leonie Brinkema acknowledged that Google monopolized the market through this, but judged the division of the company to be overly harsh and unrealistic.

In the case of a corporate split, lawsuits and appeals will follow, it will take several years for the process to be completed, and it is unclear who will purchase the platform.

Accordingly, the court adopted 'behavioral remedies' to correct abuse of dominance, such as granting real-time bidding access to competitors instead of selling the platform.

Accordingly, Google effectively won a lawsuit last year in the forced sale of the web browser Chrome, and was also able to protect its online advertising platform.

Google released a statement saying, "We are pleased that the court dismissed our request to dismantle a tool that helps small businesses attract customers and grow."

The Antitrust Division of the Ministry of Justice said through social networking service (X)

On the other hand, Sasha Howarth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a technology company watchdog group, said, "This ruling proves that the courts cannot save us from the omnipotent power of big technology companies," and called for legislation at the Congressional level.

The stock price of Alphabet, Google's parent company, rose by about 0.8% from the previous day's closing price and is fluctuating around the $337 level as of 2 p.m. Eastern time.