Google Offers To Restructure Its Ad Business To Avoid Justice Department Lawsuit

Washington, July 9: Google has offered to spin off its ad auctions business, which allows companies to buy advertising space on the web and in search results, into a slightly more separate company in exchange for avoiding antitrust actions, as per a report by The Wall Street Journal.

According to The Verge, the offer is reportedly one of several concessions Google has made to the US Department of Justice in order to avoid further anti-competitive lawsuits. Google Ad Manager to Waive Ad Serving Fees for News Publishers for Five Months Amid COVID-19 Pandemic.

The move would be a corporate shuffle, rather than spinning off parts of its advertising business or selling them entirely, the proposal would make them a separate Alphabet company.

Alphabet is the parent company of Google’s subsidiaries, including Google, Waymo, and DeepMind. (Things like YouTube, Pixel, and, of course, AdSense are considered Google subsidiaries.) So, even if Google no longer runs the ad auctions, the buck eventually comes back to the same people. The change could affect “tens of billions of dollars” in business.

Google’s dominance and scale in the app and web advertising industries have previously piqued the interest of regulators. The US government charged the company with antitrust violations in 2020, alleging that it was “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising.”

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority recently launched an investigation into Google’s advertising practises, stating that it would look into the company’s ad exchanges and markets, as reported by The Verge.

Google is likely to want to avoid any further lawsuits and enforcement actions, which could force it to make far more drastic changes than the ones it is currently offering. According to the Wall Street Journal, a new lawsuit from the Department of Justice could be filed within the next few months if no agreement is reached with the company.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, Morning Tidings Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)