Googlehas lost a major antitrust case after a judge found it illegally built 'monopoly power' to control online advertising.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema made the ruling on Thursday in a significant victory for online news publishers.
The decisionvindicates dozens of companiesthat were disadvantaged by Google's practices worldwide.
Daily Mail's Chief Digital OfficerMatthew Wheatland was a keywitness in the case, fought by the Department of Justice, which proved the tech giant promotes anti-competitive practices in two key markets.
These two markets - the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising - were illegally controlled by Google's monopoly for the last decade, the judge ruled on Thursday.
However, Judge Brinkema dismissed the third notion that Google monopolized tools used by advertisers to buy display ads.
She also chastised the company for its 'systemic disregard of the evidentiary rules regarding spoliation of evidence and its misuse of the attorney-client privilege’.
Immediately after the landmark ruling in Virginia on Thursday, Alphabet's shares sank by 3.2 percent - signaling the latest major blow for the embattled tech titan.
Google lost a landmark antitrust federal case after being found guilty of monopolizing advertising technology markets - in what's being hailed as a major win for the free press
Pictured:Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.Google said they will appeal the part of the case they lost
Judge Brinkema said the company used 'contractual policies and technological integration' to ultimately suffocate other news publishers on the platform.
Google was also found to have imposed policies warning off competition to its customers, as well as removing desirable product features - whichdeprived the search engine's rivals of the ability to compete.
Judge Brinkema wrote in a 115-page opinion, which applies to Google’s operations worldwide: 'Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising.
'Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features,' she wrote.
'In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.
During the antitrust trial in September, Mr. Wheatland told the court: 'We are a news publisher that produces content that we believe Americans find important and interesting, and monetization we receive is generated by display advertising which runs through Google.
'Google suppressing prices for publishers ultimately reduces publisher revenue which, in turn, means we do not invest in journalism in a way that we potentially otherwise could.'
Google have said they will appeal the part of the case they lost.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, told The Verge: 'The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don't harm competition.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema (pictured) made the ruling on Thursday, vindicating dozens of companies who were disadvantaged by Google's illegal practices in the advertising and publishing world
'We disagree with the Court's decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.'
Next week, a judge will hold a trial in Washington next week on a request by the US Department of Justice to make Google sell its market-leading Chrome browser and take other measures to end its dominance in online searches.
Jonathan Kanter, the former Justice Department antitrust chief, praised the outcome on Thursday.
He told Bloomberg that the ruling 'is a huge victory for antitrust enforcement, the media industry, and the free and open internet. I am extremely proud of our team at DOJ and partners from the state attorneys general for this momentous victory.'
'Google is now an illegal monopolist twice over.'
The ruling on Thursday comes just two days after a new lawsuit against Google was announced in Britain.
A class action lawsuit, citing potential damages of up to $6.6 billion, was launched against the company for allegedly abusing its dominant market position in online search.
Filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the new legal battle claims that Google's actions allowed the tech giant to charge higher prices for ads that show up in search inquiries.
