Google grilled in the US Senate over market dominance
"Do you think that Google would have had over 90% of the publisher ad server market if you hadn't bought DoubleClick?" Senator Amy Klobuchar asked.
Donald Harrison, President, Global Partnerships, and Corporate Development at Google, yesterday testified in a hearing on the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights of the US Senate. The hearing entitled Stacking the tech: Has Google harmed competition in online advertising? lasted 3 hours.
NPR reported that Google executive faced a bipartisan grilling in the Senate, and The Verge reports the antitrust case against Google is gathering steam.
Google initially named Adobe, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, News Corporation, Oracle, Verizon, Index Exchange, Magnite, MediaMath, OpenX, and The Trade Desk as competitors in the ad tech ecosystem.
Google stated publishers kept over 69 percent of the ad revenue in 2019.
Google said advertising makes the free and open internet possible, and without advertising, websites will be forced to adopt subscription models or shut down their operations entirely. Google mentions that without websites for free, people have less need for search engines like Google.
Senators questioned Google on how is selling advertising on YouTube, by limiting the buying via Google Ads and DV360. Senators revealed concernings that Google is playing a dominant role in buying and selling ads online, calling Google the giant Gorilla in the ad space.
Google's president of global partnerships responded by saying that Google democratized the ad space enabling small businesses to grow online with innovative tools. Google mentioned that online advertising prices have fallen in the US more than 40% since 2010.