Google should relax ad tech rules, appoint antitrust monitor, US judge finds
- On Wednesday, District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered Google to relax rules governing online advertising auctions and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, rejecting the Justice Department's demand that the company break up its advertising technology monopoly.
- Brinkema rejected the Justice Department's insistence that Google sell AdX, where publishers pay a 20% fee, despite finding in April 2025 that the company maintained an illegal monopoly over online advertising technology.
- The judge accepted proposals requiring Google to allow real-time bids from AdX using other publisher ad servers and prohibited requiring websites to use AdX, with changes remaining in place for six years.
- Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward called the decision a "significant victory" for restoring competition, while both the Justice Department and Google have 14 days to seek redactions and 30 days to file a proposed final judgment.
- Alphabet, with market value exceeding $4.1 trillion, races to expand in AI against rivals Anthropic and OpenAI while advertising accounted for about 73% of its revenue last year.
15 Articles
15 Articles
Monopolist Google gets ‘behavioral’ guardrails and a monitoring plan
Finding that divestiture is neither realistic nor needed, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote behavioral remedies will be sufficient to “effectively pry open to competition” the ad tech markets.
Google should relax ad tech rules, appoint antitrust monitor, US judge finds
A federal judge said Google should relax its rules governing its online advertising auctions and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, while stopping short of demanding that the Alphabet unit break up its advertising technology monopoly.
Google Avoids Advertising Business Spinoff, But... U.S. Court Orders 6 Years of Antitrust Monitoring
[Digital Daily Reporter Chae Seong-oh] Although Google avoided the worst-case scenario of a forced spin-off of its advertising technology business, it will face stringent corrective measures for the next six years, including competitor integration, data openness, and a ban on bidding discrimination. This is a ruling by a U.S. court ordering the company to overhaul its business operations to broaden market entry for competitors, rather than selli…
Google will retain its AdX advertising bag, but a U.S. federal judge ordered it to modify its auction rules, open connections with rivals, and submit to six years of surveillance. The ruling comes when artificial intelligence begins to transform the way advertisers and publishers buy, sell, and distribute digital advertising.
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