A former Google advertising executive testified in the US antitrust case against Google, painting a picture of a company where it can be difficult to make change.
The Department of Justice is trying to prove that Google’s ad business is a monopoly with tools that control how both advertisers and publishers buy and sell digital ads. Eisar Lipkovitz, a former vp of engineering of display and video ads at Google, testified on behalf of the Department of Justice on the second day of the trial.
Lipkovitz was one of the witnesses Google objected to, claiming his “lack of personal knowledge.”
The US Department of Justice brought forward two separate depositions of Lipkovitz. One was read by a member of the court staff, and the other was shared on video. Lipkovitz did not appear in person, which meant he couldn’t be cross-examined by Google’s lawyers.
During Lipkovitz’s testimony, he expressed faults with Google’s advertising products, calling the ad-serving team “lazy and slow” and noted how the entire ads operation could be resistant to innovation.
In his testimony, Lipkovitz shared ways Google’s internal politics prevented changes he felt would be helpful to customers. For example, there was a discussion that took place over a year to lower the take rate, or how much money Google collects from advertisers in exchange for using its tools. The talks focused on AdX, Google’s publisher-focused tool that allows publishers to sell their ads to multiple advertisers at once. The talks never amounted to anything and frustrated Lipkovitz.
“No one has authority to make decisions,” he said. He said his frequent losing battles left him “bitter” and said “the machine won.”
In response to a question about whether he ever felt a conflict of interest while representing both advertisers and publishers in his role at Google, Lipkovitz testified that he did.
“The people I prefer [at Google] saw the conflict of interest while the others were making self-interested arguments,” he said, in a filmed deposition presented as evidence by the DOJ. The DOJ is trying to make its case that Google operates an adtech monopoly.
