Ex-Google exec said goal was to ‘crush’ competition, trial evidence shows

A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company’s then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to “crush” rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan’s antitrust trial on Wednesday.

The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice’s claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle.