A top Google engineer told federal court that the tech giant is ready to lift the veil on how it chooses how the advertising system will appear on its website and marks important concessions in the ongoing antitrust law.
Glenn Berntson, who heads engineering at Google Ad Manager, said in testimony this week it was a “good idea” to share more information about the company’s ad selection process with website owners.
A statement reported by Bloomberg. It’s when prosecutors are asking for drastic changes to how Google runs its advertising business.
The case focuses on a ruling from April when US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Google illegally over two major markets. The judge found that the company controls more than 90% of the ad server market and monopolizes the ad exchange business. Now, prosecutors want the judge to split some of Google’s advertising operations and force the company to clarify how the system works.
Google Ad Manager combines both ad servers and ad exchanges into one product. Ad servers act as a website control center, determining where ads should go, what to display, and tracking the advertisers’ results.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2023, seeking public access to the formula used by Google, and selecting the winner of the auction.
Technical challenges when publishing advertising selection codes
Berntson opposed it simply by releasing computer code, saying that most website publishers would have a hard time figuring out it. Instead, he suggested that Google could create a technical document describing the decision-making process. He admitted that large publishers with advanced advertising practices and competing ad server companies would probably want to look into the actual code.
The website publisher has been complaining for years that Google’s advertising products are working like a mystery. Some testified about their complaints about their systems during the test.
“I don’t know why the impressions land like them,” Grant Whitmore said last week. Advance Local runs a local news operation for Advance Publications Inc. of Newhouse Family.
The two-week hearing has an 81-year-old judge considering penalties to be imposed. Brinkema, who joined the bench in 1993, focuses on technical questions about what the prosecutors are demanding.
“The place where you should spend your time should be spent on professionals,” Brinkema told her attorney, dismissing her previous testimony as “window dressing.” She said she wanted to hear what Google thinks is technically possible.
The government is promoting ADX sales
As Cryptopolitan previously reported, the biggest government demand includes enforcing Google to sell ADX exchanges. This handles about 56% of the market by connecting buyers and sellers at a 1-second auction.
A computer science professor at the University of Minnesota reviewed Google’s computer code and called it “beautiful to see.” Jon Weissman said separating products is “technically viable” and does not undermine the quality of the software.
Google disputes this view. Tim Craycroft, vice president of Google Advertising, called the government’s plans “incoherent in a naive, ambiguous, inconsistent place.” He said it would take “years of work” to complete the separation.
An engineer who previously worked for both Google and Meta estimated that the move would take at most 18 months, and that it would take around 80 engineers. Golanka Biedov testified to the government and her figures are based on Google’s internal documents.
Prosecutors also hope that Google will build the tool to allow publishers to easily move data elsewhere, and make ad servers work better with competing technologies. They want the auction selection process to be published and limit Google to prefer its own ad purchasing tools.
According to economic experts at the Department of Justice, its ad network, Google Ads, sends 89% of its other Google products to other Google products. Craycroft said the proposed changes would mark Google as a “competitive disadvantage” compared to other companies in the industry.
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