US Rejection Puts EU Breakup of Google in Ad Tech at Risk
A US judge has ruled against breaking up Google's ad tech business, sparking questions about whether the EU can still pursue this path. In a 106-page decision, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema rejected the government's claim that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly over two parts of the online advertising market: the publisher side and the exchange.
The investigation focused on how Google acquired competitors in a strategy to control key digital advertising tools used by website publishers to sell advertising space. The judge found that Google unlawfully tied its publisher ad server and exchange, using this tie to maintain its monopoly power.
Instead of divestiture, the judge imposed behavioral remedies, including interoperability with rival ad exchanges and better pricing transparency mechanisms for publishers and advertisers. Google will also be barred from reimplementing Unified Pricing Rules, a price parity condition that prohibited publishers from routing their ads through Google's exchange at prices higher than they routed them through competing exchanges.
The decision creates a divergence between the US and EU approaches to regulating Google's ad tech dominance. The European Commission has been investigating Google's ad tech monopoly since 2021 and has indicated that structural remedies, including divestiture, could be necessary to address Google's conflicts of interest.