Judge Details Restrictions On Google Ads Business, Declines Breakup

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Sept. 16 unsealed the opinion she issued Sept. 2 requiring Google to open its advertising tools to competitors, share auction data with publishers, and accept a six-year monitor - without selling its ad exchange or publisher ad server.

Virginia-based U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a short order on Sept. 2 rejecting a breakup of the ad-buying and ad-selling software Google owns and accepting most of the proposed restrictions on Google's conduct. She kept the accompanying 106-page opinion sealed so both sides could flag confidential business information and seek redactions. In the end, neither side asked for redactions, so on Sept. 16 she authorized unsealing.

Forcing Google to sell its AdX ad exchange or its publisher ad server is "neither realistic nor needed," Brinkema said in the opinion.

The new operating rules "will be sufficient to effectively pry open to competition the ad tech markets that were injured by Google's unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets," she said.

In the ruling in the antitrust lawsuit known as United States v. Google LLC, Brinkema rejected the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ's) request that Google sell its AdX exchange, publish the inner workings of DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) - its publisher ad server software - so competitors can copy them, or later be compelled to sell the rest of that ad server business.

AdX is Google's online advertising marketplace. AdX allows publishers to auction ad space in real time when users visit their websites. Google typically charges a 20 percent fee on those transactions.

Brinkema said Google must connect AdX and its publisher ad server to Prebid, a widely used open bidding system, so Google's bids compete for ads on the same footing as everyone else's. It must send live AdX bids to rival ad servers on the same terms it gives its own server, let website publishers download their own data, and stop its AdWords tool from steering bids toward Google's products simply because Google owns them.

The restrictions will go on for six years, not the 15 years the federal government sought.

Brinkema also ordered the creation of a six-year compliance monitor and a technical committee to watch whether Google follows the new rules. She said a monitor was necessary because of the seriousness of the antitrust violations, but assigned the monitor less authority than the DOJ had sought.

The Epoch Times reached out to Google for comment on the unsealed ruling. No reply was received by the time of publication.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 2, "We're very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ's proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow."

The lawsuit was filed in 2023, with the DOJ's antitrust division and a group of eight states accusing Google of illegally monopolizing the technologies used to buy and sell online ads.

In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google had maintained illegal monopolies in two markets: publisher ad servers and ad exchanges.

She found that Google tied DFP and AdX together in ways that made it harder for publishers to use competing services. That arrangement helped Google maintain more than 90 percent of the publisher ad-server market.

The DOJ said Sept. 16 that the order would help restore competition in online advertising technology markets.

"The Court's ruling in the Google ad tech case marks a significant victory for this Department's efforts to protect and restore competition," Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr said in a statement.

"We will continue to review the opinion to consider the Department's options. Under President [Donald] Trump's and Attorney General [Todd] Blanche's leadership, we will never cease fighting for fair competition."

The opinion is not the final judgment. The parties have until Oct. 2 to jointly file a proposed final decree. If the parties cannot agree on a decree, each files its own version.

Bill Pan contributed to this report.