Google won’t have to sell off ad exchange in ad-tech monopoly case

Google will not be required to divest its ad exchange, AdX, even though a federal court found that the tech giant’s publisher ad server and ad exchange constituted illegal digital ad monopolies.

The opinion in US v. Google, authored by US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema and announced yesterday, marks a rejection of a Department of Justice proposal that would have required Google divest its ad exchange, as well as make some portions of its auction logic open-source.

Instead, Google will be required to take on some other proposed remedies, further details of which will likely be contained in Brinkema’s opinion, which will be unsealed in two weeks. During the trial’s remedy phase, Google proposed changes to its publisher contracts and making its ad tech more interoperable with other ad servers, among other remedies.

Brinkema’s ruling has been pending since November, when remedy proceedings, in which Google and the DOJ proposed their own versions of remedies that Google could implement, concluded with closing arguments.

“What [the ruling] shows is that structural remedies like breaking up a company or forcing a company to divest a division are not going to work,” Nikhil Lai, principal analyst at Forrester, told Marketing Brew. “In the case of ad tech, they’re too operationally complex to actually do, and maybe they’re not serving consumer welfare, which is the whole point of antitrust law.”

In a statement, Google celebrated Brinkema’s ruling.

“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, VP of regulatory affairs at Google, said in a statement, which was provided to Marketing Brew by Google spokesperson Jackie Berté.

In a post on X, the DOJ’s Antitrust Division said that it “is pleased that the court ordered substantial relief in the Google ad-tech case. We are one step closer to restoring competition and bringing relief for the American people in online advertising markets.”

Win some, lose some? This isn’t the only time Google has been accused of operating an illegal monopoly, nor is it the only recent example of the federal government seeking to regulate Big Tech ad businesses. After the DOJ sued Google over its dominance in the search industry, US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled last September that Google had to share online search data with competitors, but did not call for more far-reaching measures. Google is appealing that ruling.

Earlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, claiming it “engaged in deceptive and unfair practices that secretly inflated prices in its online search advertising auctions.” In a statement posted to its website, Amazon said it “strongly disagrees” with the FTC’s claims.