In a Thursday interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, the former chief of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division Jonathan Kanter described how the advertising landscape might start to change now that Alphabet‘s Google has lost two antitrust cases brought on by the government.
“The remedies in this case, as well as the search case, are going to be forward-looking in nature,” Kanter said.
“That means the infrastructure for selling advertising against AI, for example, is going to be highly relevant to formulating the remedies in this case,” he continued.
Hopefully, he added, there will be new opportunities for businesses to monetize AI through advertising by means other than Google. Kanter also expressed optimism about the speed of these changes, noting that “sometimes the wheels of justice move at the speed of a Pinto,” but “this case moved at the speed of a Ferrari.”
In 2023, during Kanter’s time at the DOJ, the government alleged Google’s advertising business violated antitrust laws. On Thursday, a judge ruled in favor of the DOJ, saying Google illegally dominates markets for online advertising. This is the second antitrust case the tech giant has lost in under a year, as last August Google lost another antitrust suit brought by the DOJ regarding its search business.
Kanter emphasized that advertising is Google’s core business — and one of the most significant costs for companies in general. He said Google not only illegally maintained its monopoly, but used that power to hurt others in the industry. The entire advertising ecosystem has suffered because of Google’s practices, Kanter continued, adding that news publishers and other content providers have been “overcharged and underpaid.”
While Kanter said he did not want to speak for the Trump administration’s justice department, he said “all signs” indicate that current officials will “continue to support the work that we’ve done.”
“There is wide recognition across the political continuum that if we believe in capitalism, if we believe in businesses and markets, we need to have lines on the road, we need to have opportunities for new businesses, old businesses and everyone in between to succeed,” Kanter said. “The antitrust laws do just that.”
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs told CNBC in a statement. “Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
