A federal judge today rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s effort to break up parts of Google’s advertising technology business, despite previously finding that the company illegally monopolized key digital advertising markets.
Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia rejected all three structural remedies sought by the government, including forcing Google to sell its AdX advertising exchange, according to a two-page ruling.
She also rejected proposals to open-source the final auction logic of Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP, and potentially require divestiture of the remaining DFP business.
Instead, Brinkema said she would accept most of the behavioral remedies proposed by the parties, with modifications by the court. The details are not yet public because the accompanying opinion will remain under seal for 14 days while the parties check to see if any confidential information needs to be redacted.
The DOJ and several states sued Google three years ago for dominating the market for digital advertising technology widely used by websites, blogs and online publications.
The ruling follows Brinkema’s April 2025 decision that Google illegally maintained monopolies in the markets for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges and unlawfully tied DFP to AdX. The court found Google’s conduct harmed publishers and competition in the open-web advertising market.
The decision leaves Google’s ad-tech operations intact at a time when parent Alphabet is investing heavily in AI and competing with OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies.
The ruling is Google’s second major victory against a government attempt to dismantle part of its business. In a separate search antitrust case last year, a federal judge rejected the DOJ’s attempt to force Google to sell its Chrome browser.