STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's hear some of the United States' case against Google. A lawsuit accuses Google of monopolizing digital advertising, technology that website publishers depend on to buy and sell ads. The trial began yesterday, and Jan Wolfe was in the courtroom. He's legal affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Good morning, sir.
JAN WOLFE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: I want to understand what's at stake here. If I click on some article, some random article on the internet, I'm liable to see ads embedded in the article or off to the side. What role, if any, does Google play in putting them there?
WOLFE: Yeah. So this case is focused on those sorts of banner ads you see that are all over the internet, as opposed to ads within an app...
INSKEEP: OK.
WOLFE: ...Or on social media. And Google, according to the Justice Department and a coalition of bipartisan state attorney generals, has an unlawful monopoly on tools that are used to buy and sell these ads. So a platform for media companies, websites trying to sell ads, a platform for people trying to place them, marketplaces where they interchange. And the theory of the case is that through acquisitions and various contracts meant to sort of tie these products together, Google is omnipresent, and you can't avoid them in digital advertising.
INSKEEP: And is the argument then that advertisers have been taken advantage of, overcharged? What happens that is bad according to the Justice Department?
WOLFE: Yeah, exactly that. Money that would otherwise go to, say, a newspaper through its digital ads goes to Google, and these publishers of ads suffer. But this case is not about money damages. A win for the Justice Department would be a court order that Google has to reform certain business practices, and that would come on top of potentially another case because there's two Justice Department antitrust cases against Google. This one focused on these so-called ad tech tools. And then there's another case across the river in D.C., where its search dominance is what's at issue. And in that case, last month, a judge found Google liable for violating antitrust law and is now moving to that remedies phase of the case to determine if there's anything the judge should do to limit Google - to restrict Google's conduct and open up competition.
INSKEEP: You know, it's really interesting when you say that Google ends up sucking all the advertising dollars to itself and getting them away from media companies, say, that publish things. When we talk about the decline of media, the collapse of reporting resources, the collapse of newspapers in many cities, this is a good part of what we're talking about, isn't it?
WOLFE: Yeah. And the Justice Department tried to paint that picture during its opening statements yesterday.
INSKEEP: That this doesn't just hurt companies; it actually hurts the country, I suppose. What is Google's defense here?
WOLFE: So Google, much like in the search case, says people choose it because it's the best. You know, in the search case, Google loved to point out that the No. 1 search item in Bing, Microsoft's search engine, is the word Google. According to Google, people go to Google because people like it. And it also says that the case is very backwards-looking. Advertising, according to Google, is more competitive than ever because you have, for instance, TikTok that's become a major player.
INSKEEP: Oh, interesting.
WOLFE: So it says that, you know, this case is too backwards-looking, and we should be careful doing anything that could limit innovation going forward.
INSKEEP: Jan Wolfe of The Wall Street Journal, thanks so much.
WOLFE: Yep. You bet.
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