A landmark ruling and ongoing trial against Google has established Google illegally maintained a monopoly over digital advertising—a decision that could reshape the future of ad tech.

In need of guardrails:  For Jason Fairchild, Co-Founder and CEO of tvScientific and at-tech veteran, the judgment feels like long-overdue validation. “It’s incredibly invigorating for the market to have rules enforced,” he says. “The free market economy needs guardrails, for obvious reasons. So the fact that rules are being enforced is a really healthy thing.”

Boxed out: Fairchild brings firsthand perspective to the issue. As a Co-founder of OpenX—an ad exchange and ad server that directly competes with Google—he recounts being boxed out after Google acquires and bundles DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) with its Ad Exchange (AdX). “Almost immediately, they bundled their ad server with their exchange,” he recalls. “Publishers couldn’t get access to AdX unless they used DFP. That effectively shut out any competing exchange—like ours—from working with those publishers.”

He describes how the move created a closed loop. “Publishers wanted access to AdWords—the largest pool of demand online—but the only path to that was through Google’s stack. So even if you offered a better product, the first question from publishers was, ‘Can you get us Google demand?’ And the answer was no.”

Textbook bundling: Fairchild calls it “textbook bundling” and emphasizes how difficult it is to challenge the system in real time. “You can raise your hand and say, ‘Hey, that’s a foul,’ but it takes years—decades—for due process to catch up,” he notes.

In response to Google’s tactics, OpenX pioneered header bidding—a workaround that allowed publishers to tap into multiple exchanges. “We pioneered that and own the patent,” Fairchild points out. “It helped the market flourish around the edges of the Google monopoly, but nowhere near open competition levels.”