Judge Rejects Ad-Tech Breakup for Google, Orders Tech Integration
A federal judge has rejected the US Justice Department's request to force Alphabet Inc.'s Google to sell its online advertising exchange, AdX. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to order the sale of AdX, opting instead for measures designed to make Google's technology work more readily with competing services.
According to Reuters, Brinkema accepted most of the proposed behavioral remedies, which are intended to address the connections between Google's advertising products and rival technology without transferring ownership of the exchange to another company. The outcome follows Brinkema's April 2025 ruling that Google maintained illegal monopolies in markets involving publisher ad servers and advertising exchanges.
Google had argued that separating AdX from its infrastructure would be technically complicated, potentially take years, and risk disruption for customers. Instead, the company proposed a less disruptive approach, which included giving rival publisher ad servers access to real-time bids from AdX and eliminating certain pricing restrictions.