🕒 Created

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema Rules Google Will Not Be Forced to Break Up Its Advertising Technology Business

Federal judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that Google will not be required to break up its advertising technology business, despite a previous court finding that the company operated an illegal monopoly. The ruling addresses the remedy phase of the antitrust case filed by the Department of Justice, which sought to force Google to divest its sell-side AdX exchange and DFP ad server.

Show the rest of this summary

Instead of a forced divestiture, Brinkema ordered Google to implement behavioral remedies to favor competitors. These include making real-time bid amounts for open web display ads available to rival ad servers and allowing publishers to set different price floors for individual bidders. Google has signaled support for several of these fixes, including the possibility of integrating AdX into Prebid.org. The court's decision follows a similar pattern to a 2024 ruling by Judge Amit Mehta, who also declined to force a breakup of Google's search business. While the Department of Justice argued that a forced breakup would be a cleaner solution, Brinkema noted that disrupting the current ad tech tools could negatively impact small publishers who use them for free. The administration's decision to favor behavioral fixes over a breakup provides a more expeditious path to addressing competitive harms.

Sources

Paywall and unreadable sources