Federal Judge Spares Google From Breaking Up Ad Tech Business

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge has ruled that Google does not have to dismantle its advertising technology business, rejecting the most punitive remedy sought by the Justice Department in the antitrust case against the company.

In an order issued on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia declined to compel Google to sell AdX, its online advertising marketplace.

AdX allows publishers to auction ad space in real time when users visit their websites. Google typically charges a 20 percent fee on those transactions.

Instead, Brinkema approved “most of the parties’ behavioral remedies” that will require Google to change some of its business practices.

The details of those remedies are not yet public. Brinkema’s full opinion has been temporarily sealed to give Google and the government time to identify confidential information that should be redacted.

The judge is expected to unseal the full ruling in about two weeks.

Wednesday’s order also spares Google from having to open-source key technology behind DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP, its platform for helping website publishers manage and sell advertising.

The DOJ had proposed requiring Google to make parts of DFP’s auction technology open source. It also sought the potential sale of the rest of the business if competition did not improve.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023, with DOJ’s antitrust division and a group of eight states accusing Google of illegally monopolizing the technologies used to buy and sell online ads.

In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google had maintained illegal monopolies in two markets: publisher ad servers and ad exchanges.

She found that Google tied DFP and AdX together in ways that made it harder for publishers to use competing services. That arrangement helped Google maintain more than 90 percent of the publisher ad-server market.

“Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features,” Brinkema wrote.

During a two-week remedies trial last September, the DOJ asked Brinkema to force Google to sell AdX, arguing that the company could not be trusted to operate the exchange fairly after years of anticompetitive conduct.

Google argued that forcing it to sell AdX would be technically difficult and disruptive to customers. The company also said separating the tightly integrated systems would require a lengthy and complicated transition.

Both parties welcomed parts of Wednesday’s decision.

“We’re very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The DOJ, meanwhile, pointed to the restrictions imposed by the court as a victory.

“The Antitrust Division is pleased that the court ordered substantial relief in the Google Ad Tech case,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“We are one step closer to restoring competition and bringing relief for the American people in online advertising markets.”

Wednesday’s ruling marks the second time in about a year that Google has avoided a court-ordered breakup in a high-profile federal antitrust case.

In a separate case centered on Google’s online search business, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the District of Columbia ruled in 2024 that the company had illegally maintained a monopoly in general search services.

The DOJ later asked Mehta to order Google to sell its Chrome browser, among other remedies.

The judge rejected that request in 2025. Instead, he imposed restrictions on Google’s contracts and required the company to share certain search data with competitors.