Google took a page out of a familiar playbook in court this week, defending itself from claims of anticompetitive conduct by raising security concerns. While the government argues it locked up the ad tech market to make more money, Google\u2019s witnesses say that a more closed ecosystem is often safer for users \u2014 echoing a defense both it and Apple have made of their mobile app stores.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Google\u2019s attorneys have spent the last few days mounting its defense against the Department of Justice. The company argues that conduct the Department of Justice paints as anticompetitive<\/a> \u2014 like locking customers into its services<\/a> and exerting control over the rules of the industry<\/a> through its dominance \u2014 actually has justifiable business purposes. The point was emphasized by two Google executive witnesses: Per Bjorke, director of product management for ad traffic quality, and Alejandro Borgia, director of product management for ad safety. Combined, the <\/strong>teams work to ensure Google\u2019s ads are bought and sold by trustworthy parties and that they\u2019re seen by real people, not bots. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bjorke, whose team focuses on publishers, described Google\u2019s extensive work to combat click fraud by shady websites. Each day, 15,000 to 20,000 publishers attempt to sign up to use Google\u2019s tools, Bjorke said. Each one needs to be vetted with a multistep verification process, including mailing a physical letter to make it harder for fraudsters to use fake addresses. On the advertiser side, millions of signups are blocked each year based on signals of malicious intent, Borgia said. <\/strong>Bjorke and Borgia both said their teams <\/strong>don\u2019t have revenue goals, and Google views the protection as a service that\u2019s part of working with its products. It\u2019s all meant to make sure bad actors don\u2019t get into Google\u2019s advertising ecosystem and spoil it for everyone, Bjorke said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are \u201cvery clear, significant benefits of being closed\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When Google had opportunities to open up its ecosystem, the company had to weigh the security costs, Bjorke said. <\/strong>In the early 2010s, for instance, the Google Ads advertising network was considering a way to let its massive advertiser base bid on different exchanges than Google\u2019s own AdX. The project, called AWBid, would \u201cfundamentally change\u201d the foundation of Google\u2019s fraud defenses. Keeping out bad actors got much harder when Google didn\u2019t have full control of how publishers got access to ad auctions. There are \u201cvery clear, significant benefits of being closed,\u201d Bjorke said. While the DOJ has pointed to AWBid as an example of how Google is <\/em>capable of allowing more competition, Bjorke countered that it required a huge amount of work and a lot of risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And any security failures could be costly. Bjorke related how, between about 2015 and 2018<\/a>, the 3ve botnet<\/a> ran a massive online advertising scam to siphon ad dollars. Google has said the scheme compromised about 1 million IP addresses to help its faked websites look like they were generating real traffic. Bjorke said advertisers didn\u2019t lose money, but only because Google compensated them \u2014 and Google itself lost around $30 to $40 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bjorke insists that far from locking out competitors, Google has attempted to help them. After 3ve, he says, Google realized it could take one of two paths: focus inward to protect advertisers on its own platform (growing its \u201cslice\u201d of the industry) or help clean up ad fraud across the industry (growing the \u201cpie\u201d). It chose the latter, working with other companies on a code snippet dubbed ads.txt, which relayed information that made 3ve-style attacks far more difficult. Going this route meant more work for Google, Bjorke said, but it addressed a potentially catastrophic loss of confidence in digital ads compared to older forms of advertising like TV. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The underlying argument here is that when Google gains power and makes decisions for advertisers and publishers, it\u2019s good for everyone. Without a large scale of operations, Borgia said, \u201cwe would be unable to do our jobs.\u201d And because Google owns ad tools across the entire ecosystem, he added, Google has more visibility into the system to make sure it\u2019s running safe ads that won\u2019t load viruses on users\u2019 computers or show a brand next to inappropriate content. He says Google also lets people limit how their data is used within Google\u2019s ads ecosystem \u2014 but when an outside tool is involved, that company could have its own set of rules around privacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s an argument Google and other tech giants have made elsewhere with mixed results. In an antitrust fight with Epic \u2014 which Google lost<\/a> \u2014\u00a0Google argued that making third-party app stores and sideloading easier to access would undermine important security protections on Android<\/a>. Apple made a similar case in its own antitrust suit with Epic \u2014 which it mostly won<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So far, in this case, Google has leaned heavily on a Supreme Court precedent that says it can\u2019t be forced to deal with rivals. As this phase of the trial draws to a close, it\u2019s trying to bolster that case by telling the judge that interoperability poses tangible, pragmatic risks as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n