Google Spared from Breaking Up Ad Tech Business Amid Monopoly Ruling

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema has ruled that Google will not be required to break up its ad tech business, despite being found guilty of operating a monopoly. The ruling comes after a federal court trial last April, where the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed that Google divest its sell-side AdX exchange and DFP ad server, which are bundled into one product, Google Ad Manager (GAM).

However, Brinkema rejected this proposal and instead ordered Google to make changes to how it runs its online advertising business. The judge also accepted most of the parties' proposed behavioral remedies, including making real-time bid amounts for open web display ads sold through AdX available to rival ad servers.

Google had previously promised to implement these fixes, which include deprecating its Unified Pricing Rules and allowing publishers to set different price floors for individual bidders in GAM. The company also stated it would not use 'first look' and 'last look' privileges to adjust its bids for open-web display ads.

Some critics had proposed that Google should be forced to integrate AdX into Prebid.org, but Brinkema believed pushing for a breakup would have harmed publishers even more than Google's anticompetitive practices already have. The judge pointed out that disrupting AdX or DFP could negatively impact small publishers that currently use the latter for free.