This week, the US Department of Justice begins its antitrust trial against Google, contending that the company has monopolized the economics of digital advertising at the expense of publishers and advertisers.

Unlike Google’s recent search monopoly trial, in which the DOJ prevailed but the remedy is yet to be determined, the DOJ in this case has specifically requested divestment of Google’s publisher-facing business: its ad network (also known as a sell-side platform, or SSP) and publisher ad server. The government contends that these tools give Google unfair advantages in the programmatic ecosystem. Specifically, by controlling the auction selling mechanisms for publishers, as well as the bidding algorithms for buyers, Google is able to gain unfair competitive advantages.

The trial comes amid a jumble of legal troubles for Google and big tech: On Friday, UK regulators accused Google of similar anticompetitive behavior — acting in the interest of protecting British advertisers and publishers. Canada, Australia, and the state of California have all made separate efforts to coerce big tech to pay for the benefits it receives from publishers, beyond those that are covered by ad revenue checks from SSPs.

What If The DOJ Prevails?

A trial loss for Google means its SSP and publisher ad server would no longer live within the Alphabet family (Google’s parent company). This introduces several new variables — primarily, who will purchase or finance the new entity (or entities)?

The ad server market is not exactly vibrant right now: Amazon ran the second-largest ad server (which it acquired through Sizmek’s bankruptcy) and announced its shutdown by the end of this calendar year. If Amazon determined that the revenue and margin growth in the ad server market is not enough to justify continued engineering and marketing investment, then Google is likely to come to a similar conclusion.

Absent Alphabet’s financial largesse, Google’s SSP may be “too big to survive.” Given current capital constraints and lending conditions, there is a possibility that no buyer will come forward. Oracle’s ad business, which carried a fractional price tag of Google’s Ad Manager, failed to find a buyer, forcing Oracle to take a $2 billion write-down on the decade-long effort. Other potential divestments (like ByteDance’s TikTok) are so large that the pool of potential buyers is vanishingly small.

Google may be forced to consider the largest product sunset in the history of software — shuttering a product generating billions in revenue — or pawn the venture off to banks or private equity (to shareholders’ detriment).

What If Google Prevails?

If Google wins, the status quo holds — at least until a judge decides the fate of its search monopoly sometime next year. The DOJ could appeal a loss, but staff turnover at agencies and a new administration with different priorities may alter its momentum.

The trial itself (and the multiple legal challenges that Google faces around the world) will likely slow Google efforts to “streamline” search and programmatic offerings, changing how the company approaches auction mechanics for buyers vs. sellers. This could include Google giving more third-party, accredited vendors access to its proprietary signals and metrics and/or more collaboration with vendors (e.g., DSPs, video sellers, etc.) that compete with Google’s non-SSP lines of business.

What Does This Case Mean For Advertisers And Publishers?

It will take weeks for the trial to conclude, months for a decision, and potentially a year or more for the outcome to take effect. Whatever the outcome, advertisers are unlikely to be affected. As with the search trial, Google’s buying tools will likely suffer some unwanted publicity, as its inner mechanisms and team deliberations come to light in the form of trial evidence.

For publishers, their relationship with Google and other big tech companies gets even more complex and fraught. With Google Search serving as their primary driver of traffic and Google’s SSP as a major revenue-sharing partner, publishers are taking a closer look at how age-old practices (such as scraping website content to determine search relevance) might power cutting-edge technologies like AI-generated summaries. Many publishers find that a more proactive and strategic approach to their Google partnerships yields more favorable results.