Brian Albrecht Quoted in Law360 on Google Ad Tech Remedies
Law360 quoted ICLE Chief Economist Brian C. Albrecht in an article on a federal judge’s decision to keep Google’s ad tech business intact after finding the company liable for monopolization. The piece examines why the court chose conduct remedies over a breakup, including the difficulty of separating Google’s integrated ad tools and the oversight a sale would require. Read the full piece here.
“Courts are bad at redesigning companies. A breakup of an integrated product like this would require a redesign. Judge Brinkema saw this. Selling off AdX would have taken years and required at least as much court supervision as the conduct rules,” said Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics, a think tank. “You’d need the sale to some unknown buyer, paired with a divestiture trustee, a monitor, transition services from Google, and ten years of supervision, while keeping the conduct rules in place as ‘a bridge.'”
“All three [rulings] show an appropriate reluctance to break up integrated technology. As Judge Brinkema pointed out, breakups are extremely difficult to pull off if you want to help competition and consumers,” Albrecht said. “If you just want to break things, then sure, you can break things. But the judges have avoided simply breaking things and consumers ultimately benefit from that caution.”