Google avoids breakup as judge orders ad tech unit changes
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued her decision under seal, accompanied by a short order rejecting the Justice Department’s bid to force a sale of Google’s AdX. Instead, she ordered proposed behavioural changes to Google’s business without describing what those are. The redacted decision will be issued later this month.
Alphabet Inc's Google doesn’t have to sell off its advertising exchange and instead must make its ad tech tools work with those operated by rivals, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, in a move that saves the tech giant from a second bid to force a breakup.US District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued her decision under seal, accompanied by a short order rejecting the Justice Department’s bid to force a sale of Google’s AdX.
Instead, she ordered proposed behavioural changes to Google’s business without describing what those are. The redacted decision will be issued later this month.The judge decided against a forced sale of Google despite an April 2025 ruling that the company illegally monopolised two advertising technology markets. The Justice Department had asked that Google be forced to sell its exchange and make public the auction logic that decides which advertisement will show on a website.
Brinkema rejected that option, choosing to accept “most” of the behavioural changes at Google that were recommended to her.ALSO READ | Google data centre in Andhra Pradesh: State govt defends clearances, seeks dismissal of PIL“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 vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.The judge ordered the parties to meet, confer and file a joint final judgment proposal within 30 days reflecting the opinion.
If they can’t resolve differences, they should include their respective proposals. Brinkema sealed much of the order for 14 days to enable the parties to view and move for redactions, if necessary. The Justice Department said in a statement that it was pleased the court ordered substantial relief in the case." The department will continue to fight for fair competition,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the No. 3 official currently overseeing antitrust enforcement, said in a post on the website X.
“The timing of the court’s order reflects the tradeoffs between immediate relief and remedies obtained through years of litigation." Google shares were up less than 1% at $338.3 at 1:24 p.m. in New York.Companies spend more than $919 billion globally on digital advertising, according to estimates by research firm EMarketer, making the industry one of the largest segments of the broader tech economy. Google’s US ad operations alone are expected to bring in $101.2 billion in 2026.
Most of that comes from search ads — roughly $83.8 billion — while about $17.4 billion stems from display advertising, the segment at the center of the government’s case.ALSO READ | Google rolls out Gemini 3.8 Flash, claims big gains in coding and cybersecurityThe Justice Department sued Google in 2023 in a second antitrust complaint against the tech giant, accusing the company of illegally monopolising several areas of the advertising technology used to buy, sell and serve the online display ads that appear on many websites.Google’s ad tech stack sits between publishers selling display space and advertisers bidding on it, giving the company a powerful position in how prices are set and which ads appear.
Regulators have long argued that controlling both the dominant publisher ad server and one of the largest ad exchanges allowed Google to advantage its own systems at multiple points in the process.Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, a policy advocacy group, condemned Brinkema’s ruling. “We should be denying monopolists the ill-gotten fruits of their monopolies, not rewarding them,” Haworth said in a statement.The Justice Department could still appeal the ruling, and Google continues to face scrutiny from state attorneys general, private plaintiffs and European regulators over its advertising practices.
The pace and scope of Google’s implementation will likely determine whether the remedy produces meaningful competitive shifts in the display ad market.The decision is a win for Google, which avoided a breakup in the Justice Department’s first antitrust case over its monopoly in the online search market. There, a Washington federal judge ruled that Google doesn’t have to sell off its popular Chrome web browser and instead must make available to rivals some of the data underlying its search results.ALSO READ | US tech firms may crowd out others in euro bond market and raise credit risk