US court declines to break up Google's ad tech business, adopts behavioral remedies

Court opts for conduct remedies, not divestiture

US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema has declined the Justice Department's request to force Google to sell off parts of its advertising technology business, accepting a package of behavioral remedies instead. According to The Verge, which reported the decision, Brinkema said she will adopt most of the conduct-based changes proposed by the parties, with some modifications of her own.

The precise terms remain under wraps for now. The Verge reports that the parties still need to meet to work out any additional proposed revisions and to review the judge's opinion so that confidential information can be redacted before everything is made public.

What the remedies could include

According to The Verge, the measures under discussion include stopping Google from favoring its own products in ad auctions through self-preferencing tactics, and requiring the company to give third-party ad tech tools access to the same real-time auction information that Google's own systems receive. Those would be guardrails on conduct rather than forced divestitures of core products.

What Google was found to have done

The case centered on two markets: publisher ad servers, which website publishers use to manage and sell their ad space, and ad exchanges, which run the auctions where that space is actually sold. The DOJ successfully argued that Google illegally monopolized both, and Brinkema agreed that Google had unlawfully tied its publisher ad server, Doubleclick for Publishers, to its AdX ad exchange in a way that made leaving the platform extremely difficult for customers and degraded competition. However, she found that the DOJ failed to prove Google illegally monopolized a separate market for advertiser-side tools. The Verge also disclosed that Ryan Pauley, president of PMX Global, the outlet's parent company, was deposed during the case.

A parallel to the search monopoly ruling

The outcome mirrors Google's other major antitrust loss. In the online search case decided by Judge Amit Mehta, the court likewise stopped short of a breakup, instead ordering Google to share data with competitors and change its behavior. Google has appealed that judgment, and as The Verge notes, once Brinkema's final opinion is released, Google can similarly appeal her underlying ruling that it illegally monopolized the ad tech markets.

Google signaled satisfaction with the remedies 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. The Verge said the DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why it matters

The decision concludes the district court phase of the third major monopoly case the federal government has brought against a tech giant in recent years. Beyond the two DOJ cases against Google, the FTC brought a monopolization case against Meta, which it recently lost, while trials between federal enforcers and Amazon and Apple are expected in the coming years.

The broader signal is that courts have now twice declined structural separation for Google, choosing behavioral fixes that are typically harder to enforce and slower to reshape markets. Whether these remedies actually restore competition in ad tech may ultimately be settled on appeal, just as the search case now is. The political backdrop suggests the pressure is unlikely to fade either: as The Verge notes, Google has faced antitrust scrutiny under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with then-Senator JD Vance praising FTC Chair Lina Khan's approach to tech enforcement. For publishers, advertisers and rival ad tech firms, the practical stakes rest on the still-unpublished remedy details, and on how long Google's inevitable appeal keeps the question open.