At one point during day three of the remedy phase of United States v. Google LLC, taking place in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema said that her favorite words are “we settled.”
The DOJ’s and Google spent the day discussing the technical aspects of potential remedies. Marketing Brew has compiled key moments from Wednesday’s proceedings below.
Two sides of the same coin: While Google is against divesting its ad exchange AdX or DFP, the DOJ sought to drive home why it might be needed. It called Harvard economics professor Robin S. Lee to the stand and probed him on proposed remedies.
- Lee seemed to have proposed that those remedies might not resolve the persistent competitive harms that the company poses.
However, during Google’s cross-examination of Lee, he appeared to suggest that a divestiture of AdX or DFP might not prevent market monopolization on its own.
Take it easy: If the court does order Google to divest some of its ad products, the level of ease with which such a transaction could be executed was disputed. Both sides questioned Paul Crisci, a former UBS banker and an M&A advisor, about how that might work.
- Crisci appeared to suggest that both AdX and DFP would be attractive M&A targets.
Stay tuned for Marketing Brew’s coverage of Thursday’s proceedings.
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