Google's Ad Business Gets Six-Year Restructuring Plan Instead of Breakup

A US federal judge has rejected the government's push to break up part of Google's advertising business, instead opting for a set of rules governing how the company must operate its ad-business units across the advertising market.

The decision is the second time in recent years that a federal judge has declined to dismantle a piece of Google's business after a separate monopoly case last year refused to force the sale of its Chrome browser.

Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a full remedies opinion in the US v. Google ad-technology monopoly suit on September 16, which requires Google to integrate its ad technology ecosystem with the open-source consortium Prebid to ensure fair competition.

The company must build API integrations connecting AdX and Google Ad Manager to Prebid, submit AdX bids to rival publisher ad servers on the same terms that DFP receives them, share bid data with publishers, and end direct bidding into DFP or favoring Google's own ad-technology tools.

The changes will run for six years, as suggested by Google, instead of 15 years sought by the Justice Department and states that joined the case. However, the court can extend the period if the judgment has not achieved its goal.