Media Must Cover Google's Ad Monopoly as a System Failure

A federal judge found Google guilty of monopolizing the advertising technology market. Then she let the monopoly stand. Google controls the buy side, the sell side, and the exchange where both meet — extracting billions from publishers and advertisers in markets it simultaneously dominates. The judge rejected calls to break up any piece of it, and Google immediately declared victory.

This is the second time a federal judge has found Google guilty of monopolization and declined to break it up. The message to every would-be monopolist is now explicit: get big enough, and the law won't touch you. Meanwhile, the FTC just sued Amazon for secretly inflating ad auction prices by an estimated $20 billion — in a market structured exactly like Google's.

We call on the media to cover these rulings not as routine antitrust developments, but as a systemic breakdown — one where courts find corporations guilty of breaking the law and then let them keep the profits. As the Open Markets Institute put it, the U.S. judiciary is abdicating its duty to apply antitrust law, leaving giant corporations free to devour the open internet. The public deserves reporting that names that failure plainly and connects it to the prices, power, and diminished democracy that follow.