ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — The U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that Google illegally dominated online advertising technology in seeking a second antitrust win against the company. 

The closing arguments in Alexandria cap a 15-day trial held in September in which prosecutors sought to show Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. 

“Google rigged the rules of the road,” said DOJ lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum, who asked the judge to hold Google accountable for anti-competitive conduct and added that Google is “once, twice, three times a monopolist.” 

Another DOJ lawyer, Julia Tarver Wood, compared the case to the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities and said U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema had to decide whether to adopt the DOJ or Google version of the state of the ad market. 

Google lawyer Karen Dunn said the DOJ had not met its legal burden and was asking Brinkema to overrule key precedents. “The law simply does not support what the plaintiffs are arguing in this case,” Dunn said. 

She argued the DOJ was ignoring Google’s legitimate business decisions and the robust quality of the online advertising market. The company argues the government had cherry-picked a narrow slice of the online market and did not account for aggressive competition. 

Shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, were up 1.4% in afternoon trading. 

Publishers testified at the trial that they could not switch away from Google, even when it rolled out features they disliked, since there was no other way to access the huge advertising demand within Google’s ad network. 

In 2017, News Corp estimated losing at least $9 million in ad revenue that year if it had switched away, one witness said. 

If Brinkema finds that Google broke the law, she would consider prosecutors’ request to make Google at least sell off Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange. 

Google offered to sell the ad exchange this year to end a European Union antitrust investigation, but European publishers rejected the proposal as insufficient, Reuters first reported in September. 

Analysts view the ad tech case as a smaller financial risk than the case in which a judge ruled Google maintains an illegal monopoly in online search, and in which prosecutors have argued the company must be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
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Chinese hackers are positioning themselves in U.S. critical infrastructure IT networks for a potential clash with the United States, a top American cybersecurity official said Friday.

Morgan Adamski, executive director of U.S. Cyber Command, said Chinese-linked cyber operations are aimed at gaining an advantage in case of a major conflict with the United States.

Officials have warned that China-linked hackers have compromised IT networks and taken steps to carry out disruptive attacks in the event of a conflict. Their activities include gaining access to key networks to enable potential disruptions such as manipulating heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in server rooms, or disrupting critical energy and water controls, U.S. officials said earlier this year.

Beijing routinely denies cyber operations targeting U.S. entities. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Adamski was speaking to researchers at the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia. On Thursday, U.S. Senator Mark Warner told The Washington Post a suspected China-linked hack on U.S. telecommunications firms was the worst telecom hack in U.S. history.

That cyber espionage operation, dubbed “Salt Typhoon,” has included stolen call records data, compromised communications of top officials of both major U.S. presidential campaigns before the November 5 election, and telecommunications information related to U.S. law enforcement requests, the FBI said recently.

The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are providing technical assistance and information to potential targets, the bureau said.

Adamski said Friday that the U.S. government has “executed globally synchronized activities, both offensively and defensively minded, that are laser-focused on degrading and disrupting PRC cyber operations worldwide.”

Public examples include exposing operations, sanctions, indictments, law enforcement actions and cybersecurity advisories, with input from multiple countries, Adamski said.
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From digital passports to apps that announce air alerts or enable conscripts to update their information in the draft register, Ukraine is now a world leader in the drive to digitalize government services. From Kyiv, Lesia Bakalets reports on how Russia’s full-scale invasion has pushed Ukraine’s drive to digitalize.
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