Australia's competition watchdog sued Google over this about 10 years ago, and lost the case on appeal. Google's winning argument was that it was the ad buyers

Australia's competition watchdog sued Google over this about 10 years ago, and lost the case on appeal. Google's winning argument was that it was the ad buyers that were responsible for breaking the law, not Google who were just acting as a conduit. I'm not really convinced these kinds of "we're just the platform" arguments stack up that well anymore when we see the harm these kinds of unregulated platforms have done to society. Unfortunately though the precedent is already set, so it will be fairly had to backtrack.