Who will blink first in battle to topple Google adtech?

Excerpt shared from Decision Marketing's 'Who will blink first in battle to topple Google adtech?':

With US antitrust enforcers renewing their efforts this week to press for a forced sale of Google’s online ad business, publishers and rival adtech developers are watching closely.

Julia Tarver Wood, an attorney with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in her opening statement that making Google sell AdX was necessary to restore competition.

However, will the tech giant, which is notoriously adept at avoiding any sort of crackdown, escape again? Decision Marketing speaks to industry experts.

First up is Limelight Inc co-founder and CEO David Nelson, who says he feels quite ambivalent about the position Google finds itself in.

He argues that the main reason the company consistently finds itself in the firing line is because it has built a hugely successful business, yet it has also used its dominant position for its own benefit.

Nelson added: “The situation currently under scrutiny is a prime example of this, where Google’s ad server and Google’s ad exchange have a preferential relationship. This is clearly not right or defensible, and it’s notable that the DoJ has gone as far as to ask the judge presiding over the trial to order Google to sell its ad exchange. So we shall see.

“Whatever happens, we shouldn’t underestimate Google’s ability to a) come out of this relatively unscathed; and b) drag things out for so long by way of appeals that it has plenty of time to develop a replacement offering for anything it is ordered to dispose of."

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