Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

What did they think was going to happen when Google bought the largest mobile ad network by far for both Android and iOS a decade ago? (AdMob)

Antitrust agencies and governments in general need to set more pro-active ground rules that attempt to prevent monopolies from even happening in the first place.

Punishing them after the fact is both ineffective and too disruptive. I'd rather they didn't allow Google to buy AdMob instead of forcing them to spin it off now. I mean, sure, I'll take it. Still better than nothing. But this shouldn't have been needed because AdMob should have remained a competitor to Google in the mobile ads space, not a division of it.

If large corporations think they have made so much money from their core market that now it's time to spread to new markets, then they must also have the money to start their own competitor in that market from scratch. They shouldn't be allowed to just buy everyone up from that new market.

I think we'd have WAY healthier "free markets" - and more importantly, high competition - if this one thing was implemented.

As much as I agree with the core of what you are saying, it isn't AdMob that is the issue. It's that Google controls both the marketplace, the pub-side and the buy-side, as well as the browser and the devices used to experience ads. Apple is now aiming for a similar level of control in the ad space very blatantly using their ownership of the platform to do what they want to power themselves up.

This vertical integration in the space is what drives the anti-competitive behavior, if the Google buy-side were a separate company that happened to acquire AdMob there would be no real issues as they don't control the whole stack.

FB on the other hand sells a service and lets companies use their APIs to integrate as well as competing with them via their internal sales team.

These companies can do this only because you are forced to work with them because they own such a large part of internet traffic, not because they offer particularly good services or have better technology or prices.

Same senators who thought Google made iPhones? Not defending Google but I am saying that most of those senators are not the holders of truth when it comes to technology.

The internet the way is currently design will resulted in centralisation and end up with monopoly or oligopoly.

No... If I recall right, that was Steve King. Steve King was a congressman, not a senator. Maligning a single congressman does not invalidate the basic point that a lot of senators are making.