Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled yesterday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.86 trillion company and alter its power over the internet. (Not to mention, possibly restoring access to advertising that used to keep a reliable revenue stream for blogs like ours!) Via the New York Times:

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.

“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,” Judge Brinkema said.

The government argued in its case that Google had a monopoly over three parts of the online advertising market: the tools used by online publishers, like news sites, to host open ad space; the tools advertisers use to buy that ad space; and the software that facilitates those transactions.

[...] Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act “by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the online technology ad industry, the court said.

Another federal judge ruled last August that the company had a monopoly in online search, and is now considering a request by the Justice Department to break up the company, with a three-week hearing on the matter scheduled to begin Monday.

Hey, Google, all you had to do was suppress your greed and NOT be evil. You have only yourselves to blame.