On Thursday, April 17, 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that “Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising.”

The following statement can be attributed to Sumit Sharma, Executive Director for NextGen Competition:

“Judge Brinkema’s decision is a vindication for consumers, publishers, and advertisers who have suffered from Google’s dominance across every key stage of the digital advertising pipeline.

Consumers have long suffered under this unchecked power: a lack of innovation, rising prices for ad-supported products and services, and little control over how their data is used.

Judges have now ruled that Google is a monopoly in both internet search and digital advertising. It’s clear that, without intervention, markets like these won’t become competitive on their own. We hope this decision signals a continued and much-needed escalation in antitrust enforcement across digital markets.”

About NextGen Competition

NextGen Competition is on a mission to create a fair and competitive technology ecosystem that empowers consumers, workers, and small businesses by supporting robust enforcement of antitrust laws and policies. Our aim is to enable many independent technology companies to innovate, compete, and offer differentiated services, and to rectify the profound imbalance of power that allows the largest technology firms to unilaterally set terms and conditions for everyone, use our data, and capture our attention without meaningful constraints.