American Antitrust Institute 2025 Antitrust Awards
The American Antitrust Institute will honor Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz for her testimony in US and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC, which involved assessing whether the alleged conduct was exclusionary, harmed competition in the relevant antitrust markets, and ultimately resulted in harm to consumers.
BRG’s team also included Dr. Albert Metz, Dr. Steven Sexton, Laura Brown Ildefonso, Dr. Cirrus Foroughi, Sean Golz, and Sanskar Bista.
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The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) has selected Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz as an honoree in the category of “Outstanding Antitrust Litigation Achievement in Economics.” She will be recognized at AAI Antitrust Awards Night in Washington, DC, on November 6.
Dr. Abrantes-Metz was nominated for her contributions to US and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC, in which the US Department of Justice and seventeen states (plaintiffs) retained BRG in an antitrust action against Google LLC (Google) that claimed that Google monopolized three digital advertising technology markets.
Dr. Abrantes-Metz served as a testifying expert on antitrust liability and harm. She assessed whether the alleged conduct was exclusionary, harmed competition in the relevant antitrust markets, and ultimately resulted in harm to consumers.
Across two expert reports, deposition testimony, and testimony at trial, Dr. Abrantes-Metz found that Google engaged in exclusionary conduct that protected from competition:
- Google’s advertising exchange (AdX), thereby allowing Google to develop and maintain market power in the ad exchange market and causing harm to market participants.
- Google’s publisher ad server (DFP), thereby allowing Google to maintain market power in the publisher ad server market and causing harm to market participants.
- Google’s advertiser ad network (Google Ads), thereby allowing Google to maintain market power in the advertiser ad network market and causing harm to market participants.
This exclusionary conduct led to higher prices, fewer transactions, and diminished product innovation. In addition, Dr. Abrantes-Metz concluded that it was reasonable to expect that Google’s exclusionary conduct harmed consumers of online content by reducing the ability of web content producers to monetize their content. As a result, producers would be expected to create less, and lower-quality, content.
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